When “Pretty Woman” was released in March 1990, Julia Roberts was a young 22-year-old woman finding a spot for herself in Hollywood. In contrast, Richard Gere, already established within the movie industry, was, per Insider, 40 years at the time. However, despite the disparity in their ages and experience, Gere and Roberts were able to develop a good working relationship. “Richard was very kind because Julia was new…Richard was very comfortable and put Julia at ease,” the movie’s director Garry Marshall told HuffPost in 2012.
Unsurprisingly, Roberts and Gere’s cordiality seeped into their roles, with the two delivering an impressive and palpable on-screen chemistry that is still talked about even decades later. “You see, you can fake anything in this business except chemistry, and when two people kiss, the audience knows if there’s chemistry or not, and Richard and Julia had great chemistry,” Marshall gushed of the pair.
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But perhaps Gere getting along so well with Roberts was already a given, seeing that the “Notting Hill” star has since revealed that she convinced him to take up the role of Edward Lewis in the 1990 film. After failing to find possible fits for the role, Roberts and Marshall flew to New York, where they met with Gere. “I just said, ‘You have to do this movie.’ I kind of pleaded with him in a very real way,” she recalled to Entertainment Weekly back in 2017.
