How Cindy Crawford Says She Lost Herself in Richard Gere Marriage
The supermodel and the actor were married for four years in the early '90s.
When Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere got married, the supermodel was 25 years old, and the actor was 42. They were one of the most high-profile celebrity couples in Hollywood in the early '90s, but their marriage only lasted four years. In the decades since, Crawford has given the occasional rare comment about his romance with Gere, including why they ultimately split. Now, the 57-year-old supermodel says that she was too young to realize that she shouldn't change herself for the actor, explaining in the new Apple TV+ docuseries The Super Models, that she "mold[ed]" her personality around Gere's interests when they were an item. Read on to find out more, including what their relationship is like today.
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Gere and Crawford tied the knot in 1991.
When Crawford and Gere got married in 1991, they had been dating for a few years. According to People, they met in 1988 at a cookout hosted by photographer Herb Ritts. Their wedding was a low-key affair in Las Vegas, and they used wedding rings made of aluminum foil. Appropriately, the nuptials were photographed by Ritts.
Crawford was more eager to get married than Gere, and they both revealed later that she had given him an ultimatum. "This woman, who I was crazy about and loved very much, said, 'I can't wait. I gotta move on if it ain't happening,'" he reportedly said of her, according to The Mirror.
During an interview at the 92nd Street Y in 2015, the supermodel explained (via Yahoo! Entertainment), "Richard and I had been dating for several years and at one point I was like, 'Are we doing this or what?' And he said, 'Let's go to Vegas tonight.'"
She shaped herself around his interests.
As reported by People, in The Super Models, Crawford says of being with Gere, "I think I was 22 when we met. In the beginning of a relationship, when you're a young woman, you're like, 'You like baseball? I like baseball. Oh, you're really into Tibetan Buddhism? I might be into that. I'll try that.'" She adds, "You're willing to kind of mold yourself around whoever you are in love with."
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Crawford said their age gap played a role in their split.
In a 2013 interview with Oprah's Master Class (via Entertainment Tonight), Crawford explained that she was still finding herself while they were together.
"I think a lot of what happened with Richard and I was, I was still 22 and at 22—as a young woman—I was kind of still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be and he was already 37," she said. "I just think your twenties for women is such a time when you're starting to come into your own and feel your own power and connect to your inner strength and it's hard to do that—it's hard to change—in a relationship, because what one person might have signed up for, all of a sudden, you're not that anymore."
She continued, "I think I was more willing at 22 to be, like, 'Okay, I'll follow,' but then you start going, 'Well, I don't want to just follow—I want to lead sometimes and I want to walk side by side sometimes.'"
She was also becoming more in control of her career.
In addition to growing into herself as a person, Crawford's career was also evolving during the marriage.
"He was older, so I just was, like, in a different circle and not doing some of those same fashion-y things anymore," Crawford says in The Super Models. She also explains that her relationship Gere came at a "time in my career when I veered away from the high fashion elite and took more control."
In February 2023, Crawford told Vogue Arabia of this time in her life, "I was doing Vogue and Revlon and then I did Playboy, and people couldn't understand why I would risk that. It wasn't about the money because I barely got paid for the first time. I gave up getting paid in order to have control, so that I have approval of every image." She added, "Because I took a chance there, it opened me up to a much broader audience, male and female, which Vogue didn't have. And that's why I got MTV and that's why I got Pepsi."
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They both moved on to new relationships.
Crawford and Gere divorced in 1995. She married Rande Gerber in 1998 and the two are still together today. They have two children, Presley and Kaia, who have both followed in her footsteps and have their own modeling careers.
Gere was married to actor Carey Lowell from 2002 to 2016, and they share a son named Homer. Since 2018, Gere has been married to political activist Alejandra Silva, with whom he has two young children.
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