Richard Gere Reveals the One Acting Rule He Learned from Garry Marshall While Filming “Pretty Woman”

Gere says director Garry Marshall taught him that movement can communicate “a lot” about how characters think and feel about one another

Richard Gere is opening up about an important acting lesson he took from the making of Pretty Woman.

In an interview with SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, the 75-year-old actor said that it was late director Garry Marshall who helped ensure that the chemistry between Gere and costar Julia Roberts was just right.

“So, we’re working on Pretty Woman and we’re trying to figure out how to do this and we’re fooling around with the director, Garry Marshall, who’s incredible,” Gere said. “I love Garry.”

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Related: Richard Gere Remembers His First Meeting With Julia Roberts Ahead of Pretty Woman: ‘Please Say Yes’

Gere continued: “Julia’s there and I’m there and Julia’s really beginning as an actress and she’s Julia. She’s bubbly and she’s blah, blah, blah, and I come in. I want to act, you know, I want to be the actor, and we both are kind of like all over the place, you know?”

“She’s moving, I’m moving, and he says, ‘Wait a minute.’ Garry says, he says, ‘In this movie, one of you moves and one of you doesn’t and in this [scene]the girl moves, and the boy doesn’t,’ and that communicated a lot actually of how to approach the characters. I mean, you can read from that how they think, how they feel, how they feel about themselves, how settled they are, how unsettled they are. It said a lot coming from Garry.”

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In a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Gere reminisced about how his longtime friendship with Roberts began with a meeting in his office before he agreed to film Pretty Woman.

“She had made, I think, one film before [Pretty Woman] — Mystic Pizzaand Gary Marshall … He put us together,” Gere recounted.

He continued: “I remember Julia came to see me in New York and he said, ‘Richard, Julia, she’s good. She’s good, you’ll like her.’ So she came to New York, came to my office, Garry introduced us, and he left. And he called back like 45 minutes later and he said, ‘How’s it going?’ “

“And I said, ‘It’s Garry.’ So I’m talking to Garry, and she’s on the other side of the desk and she’s writing something on one of my Post-Its. Then she turns around and puts it down, and I read it and it says, ‘Please say yes.’ So I said, ‘Garry, I think I just said yes.’ “

He and Roberts would go on to star as romantic interests in another Marshall film 1999’s Runaway Bride, and have stayed in touch over the years.