Richard Gere: Role in “Pretty Woman” was “underrated”

Richard Gere says the script for “Pretty Woman” left a lot to be desired regarding his character, the millionaire playboy Edward Lewis.

During a master class at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, the leading actor joked that his role in the Garry Marshall-directed film was “almost criminally underrated.”

“It was basically a suit and a good haircut,” he laughed in a clip shared by The Hollywood Reporter's Chris Gardner.

To bring his character to life, Gere revealed how he and Marshall improvised one of Pretty Woman's most important scenes: a steamy sequence in which Lewis plays piano for Julia Roberts' sultry sex worker Vivian before things get heated between the two.

After the clip was filmed during the master class, the star grinned and said: “There was obviously no chemistry between this actor and this actress.”

Gere then said that the scene “was never in the script” but “ended up being an integral part of the film.”

“Garry asked me, ‘What do you do in a hotel late at night?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m usually jet-lagged, [that] would be the time when I'm in a hotel. So I'm up all night and usually there's a ballroom or a bar somewhere and I'll find a piano and play the piano,” Gere recalled.

“He said, 'Okay, let's do something with this.' So we basically improvised that scene, and he said, 'Play something moody.' I just started playing something moody that represented the inner workings of this character.”

By revealing Lewis' softer side, Roberts' character sees him “in a completely different way,” the “Unfaithful” actor explained.

“This guy had a mysterious longing and maybe a damaged side that she didn't know about.”

Although Pretty Woman was a huge success, grossing $463.4 million worldwide, Gere had more humble memories of the project.

“We had fun making it,” he told his audience in Venice. “During the whole filming, we didn't know if anyone would ever see it.”