Richard Gere Makes Rare Comment About His 20-Year Ban From The Oscars

Richard Gere has opened up about his 20-year ban from the Academy Awards in a rare comment this week.

He spoke about it in a recent interview

Speaking to Variety in an interview published on December 3, Gere shared his feelings about the 20-year ban.

“I didn’t take it particularly personally,” he said. “I didn’t think there were any bad guys in the situation.”

Gere said he didn’t want to hurt anyone

“I do what I do and I certainly don’t mean anyone any harm. I mean to harm anger. I mean to harm exclusion,” Gere added.

“I mean to harm human rights abuses, but I try to stay as close to where His Holiness comes from,” he said, referring to the Dalai Lama, who he’s known for 45 years.

He tries to embrace the beliefs

The 76-year-old actor added that he tries to embrace the Dalai Lama’s beliefs ‘that everyone is redeemable, and in the end, everyone has to be redeemed or none of us [are].’

“So in that sense, I don’t take it personally,” he said.

Gere was first banned in 1993

The actor’s ban from the Oscars began in 1993 when he made off-script remarks to denounce China while he was presenting at the ceremony.

He criticized the country’s ‘horrendous, horrendous human rights issue’ in Tibet. Gere was meant to list the nominees for Best Art Direction that year.

But he didn’t stick to the script

The Pretty Woman actor took a detour from the script and said, “… if something miraculous, really kind of movie-like, could happen here, where we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping right now in Beijing, that he will take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow people to live as free independent people again.”

He didn’t come back until 2013

Gere wasn’t invited back to present at the Oscars until 20 years later in 2013. The actor has spoken up on behalf of Tibet several times, and also called for a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

He is also banned from China.

Gere produced a documentary

The actor executive produced a 2025 documentary about the Dalai Lama called Wisdom of Happiness. But Gere has never spoken about his Oscar ban with the Buddhist leader as ‘it never came up.’ 

He said, “They’ll tell him once in a while if I get an award or something and he sends a note, congratulating me, that he’s happy for me. But that’s about as close as it gets to actually talking about movies.”