Richard Gere Blasts Trump, Not Oscars for Silencing Him
Tibetan activist forgives Academy for punishing him after fiery China protest
You can say just about anything at the Oscars podium.
Michael Moore raged against President George W. Bush during his 2003 closeup. Leonardo Di Caprio pushed Climate Change alarmism in 2016 while picking up his Best Actor Oscar for “The Revenant.”
Brad Pitt promoted a progressive talking point with a blink-and-you-missed it shelf life while accepting his Best Supporting Actor prize in 2020.
All three artists, and countless more, are welcome to return to the Oscars ceremony at any given moment. They haven’t been punished for sharing their views, no matter the reaction or content. (Nor should they be)
The same wasn’t true for Richard Gere.
The veteran star went off script at the 1993 Oscars gala, and then some, while announcing the Oscar for Best Art Direction.
[Gere] noted that over one billion people were watching the telecast. He discussed what a “horrendous human rights situation there is in China.”
The longtime practicing Tibetan Buddhist asked to send “love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping,” who was the leader of the People’s Republic of China at the time and begged him to remove Chinese troops from Tibet. The comments were deemed to be controversial at the time and he was banned from attending the Oscars following the incident.
The 76-year-old told Variety that his 1993 speech earned him a 20-year ban from the ceremony. And, apparently, he took the banishment in stride.
“I didn’t take it particularly personally,” Gere says. “I didn’t think there were any bad guys in the situation. I do what I do and I certainly don’t mean anyone any harm. I mean to harm anger. I mean to harm exclusion. I mean to harm human rights abuses, but I try to stay as close to where His Holiness comes from… 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’s an artist who was punished for sharing the “wrong” ideas, and he took the reprimand like a child who knew he misbehaved and had it coming.
For the release of “Wisdom of Happiness” ICT’s Richard Gere spoke to the Today Show on the film and the importance of the Dalai Lama’s teachings today.
Watch the full interview: https://t.co/X5LrznRcPJ pic.twitter.com/WwPEU6RSrf
— International Campaign for Tibet (@SaveTibetOrg) October 22, 2025
Gere also has faced professional blowback outside of the Oscars. The star said in 2017 that major studios stopped casting him in films following his pro-Tibetan activism. Executives feared the Chinese fallout for doing business with the handsome star.
“There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him,’ ” he acknowledges matter-of-factly. “I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese.”
Odd. Even more odd about Gere’s recent comments? He didn’t share that forgiving sentiment when the subject of President Donald Trump came up.
“…I don’t know how you explain what he has done to this country, what it feels like to be an American now, 10 or 11 months in. It’s just astonishing. It’s beyond what anyone could ever imagine.”