10 Things You Don't Know About Richard Gere — From Earning a Gymnastics Scholarship to Starring in a Rock Opera

43 years after Richard Gere’s breakout performance in American Gigolo, he reunited with the noir drama’s director Paul Schrader in Oh, Canada. In the flick, Gere, 75, portrays a Vietnam War dissenter who fled to the Great White North — but attempts to tell his story decades later during his dying days.

Here are ten things you don’t know about the An Officer and a Gentleman hunk.

1. His family’s surname was originally Geer — but his paternal great grandfather changed its spelling.

2. Both of Gere’s parents were Mayflower descendants, and his ancestors include the Pilgrims John Billington, William Brewster, Francis Eaton, Francis Cooke, Degory Priest, George Soule and Richard Warren.

3. Gere earned a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he briefly studied philosophy before dropping out.

4. Some of his earliest professional headshots were taken by then unknown photographer Herb Ritts.

5. Gere's first major acting role was in Broadway’s 1971 rock opera Soon, which closed after three performances.

6. Gere was canned from 1974’s Lords of Flatbush after butting heads with costar Sly Stallone.

7. The accomplished musician composed and performed the Pretty Woman piano theme and a guitar solo in Runaway Bride — pieces from his only two movies with Oscar-winning beauty Julia Roberts.

8. Gere studied tap dancing for five months to play fleetfooted lawyer Billy Flynn in 2002’s Chicago.

9. Gere is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, but he long ago studied Zen Buddhism under controversial Japanese teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, who was accused of financial and sexual misconduct.

10. Robert De Niro turned down Gere’s Oh, Canada part because of its paltry paycheck.