'My connection with Armani and the Dalai Lama'

Richard Gere is and remains the protagonist of films that have left their mark as an auteur (Official Gentleman) and romantic (Pretty Woman), but he is also a strenuous activist and supporter of human rights. He is the executive producer of the film Dalai Lama. The Wisdom of Happiness by Barbara Miller, Philip Delaquis, and Manuel Bauer, in theatres for Wanted today and tomorrow in special screenings with the support of Unione Buddhista Italiana. "I became a Buddhist at the age of 22, when I realised that Zen practice was my way of being in the world," Gere told the "Sole 24 Ore" in Milan at the Hotel Armani, created by the designer to whom the actor has been linked since 1980 thanks to American gigolo. Gere attended the brand's fashion show to pay tribute to his friend, who passed away on 4 September.

"Before Giorgio, I "met" his clothes. Paul Schrader, director and screenwriter of the film, was in a hurry, he put the script in my hand and asked me to accept it right away. I only had two weeks to prepare and when I arrived on the set there was the set designer, Nando Scarfiotti, who had asked Armani to design the costumes for the film. I was so young that I didn't even own a suit yet, maybe not even a tie. When I started wearing Armani's very extreme, expressionist creations, I realised that the character was starting to emerge within me, the body was starting to move differently. Inevitably, with Giorgio we became friends".

The film about the Dalai Lama was made to celebrate the Buddhist spiritual leader's 90th birthday on 6 July: "I am always a bit sceptical about films about his holiness, because they are often quickly made films that do not show the depth of his wisdom. But at the end of the screening of The Wisdom of Happiness, I was very moved. The footage is remarkable, because his holiness looks directly into the camera, creating an extremely intimate relationship between him and the viewer. It is a rather new technique, invented by the great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, using a mirror that projects the image of the interviewer into the camera (teleprompter). In addition, there was exceptional archive material, showing, for example, the Dalai Lama at the age of two.

Tenzin Gyatso, this is the secular name of the master, was recognised as the incarnation of the previous Dalai Lama when he was two years old and became the 14th spiritual leader of the community at four.

"There are several images from his youth, his twenties and various moments in his adulthood. So, I started to think about how to make it better. With Oren Moverman, with whom I made six films, we retrieved more unreleased archive material, worked on the music and became the executive producers. For all these decades, his holiness has had an enormous effect on the planet. He is probably the man who has gathered the most trust around him in the world, managing to convey a message of peace, of easily attainable well-being, of openness, of warmth, of equality, of inclusion, of the quest to banish negative thoughts.