NEED TO KNOW
Richard Gere is opening up about his life in Spain with wife, Alejandra Silva.
While attending the DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute Luncheon at the city’s Gotham Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 12, the 76-year-old actor exclusively told PEOPLE the best parts about his new home, and the thing he misses about his old one!
“My wife is so happy in Spain, so that’s the best part of that,” he explains, adding, “She has wonderful family, wonderful friends.”
“Spanish culture, there’s a very open joy about it,” he continues, adding that the Spanish people are “very warm and very open and a lot less stressed than what you find here in the U.S.”
The Pretty Woman star then went on to note that he also loves Spanish food and culture, adding, “It’s a very happy place. Like the Italians. I mean, being in Italy, being in Spain, you’re dealing with Latin cultures that just understand life in a different way than we do here.”
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But, of course, there are some things that Gere misses from his life in New York, namely the city’s “energy.” “Of course, it’s very addictive,” he adds.
Back in January, the actor opened up to Spanish outlet Elle España about his relocation, saying that he had found new “fulfillment” since moving to Europe with his wife, 41, and their children, including their sons Alexander, 5, and James, 4, and Silva’s son Albert, 11.
“You are seeing us in our momentum. We are happier than ever,” Gere told the magazine. “[Alejandra], because she is at home and I because, if she is happy, I am happy.”
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The Agency actor — who met Silva in Italy in 2014 after his divorce from ex-wife Carey Lowell, with whom he shares son Homer James, 25 — also shared that he and his wife’s common interest in environmental projects bonds them.
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“We can all minimize this sense of ego, of the self. And that’s when true change occurs,” he explained of their work, which includes collaborating on the Sierra a Mar project in Mexico.
“My wife shines for her open-mindedness and her genuine sense of gratitude,” he added. “So connecting with that, however you do it, whether you consider it spirit or religion, love or compassion … it’s infinite.”
Meanwhile, Silva told Elle España that she and Gere — whom she met in Positano on the Amalfi Coast and married in 2018 — are “soul mates.”
“We have the same values, we see the world in the same way, and from the first moment we felt like we have known each other for a long time. And this only happens once, if it happens at all … We were united by the karma of our past lives,” she said.
