Richard Gere Calls ‘Blonde on Blonde’ His All-Time Favorite

It has been more than four decades since an Armani-clad Richard Gere slunk around Los Angeles in Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo.”

Now Gere, 75, and Schrader have reunited on “Oh, Canada,” an adaptation of Russell Banks’s 2021 novel, “Foregone,” about a dying documentarian who wants to confess, mostly to his wife.

Gere and Schrader were each dealing with end-of-life losses when they jumped into the project: Banks, a close friend of Schrader’s, had died from cancer in 2023. Gere’s father also died that year.

“We were coming from emotional places,” Gere said.

In addition to “Oh, Canada,” Gere made his American TV series debut last month in “The Agency,” an adaptation of the French hit “The Bureau.”

“My wife and I binge-watched the French show and genuinely loved it,” he said. “So when I got a call saying they wanted to do an English-language version, I thought, Hmm, that’s kind of a double-edged sword. One, yeah, that sounds interesting, but two, the French one was so good, would they screw this up?”

Gere was about to travel from Paris to Marrakech to meet his family when he called to talk about his admiration for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chef-humanitarian José Andrés, the Dylan song he can’t imagine not existing and the importance of Tibet. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.