Parisian Tourist Gives Homeless Man Pizza, Finds out it’s Richard Gere!
Do you believe in karma? Do a nice deed and something good comes back to you. A recent Parisian tourist in NYC must believe in it. She gave her leftover pizza to a homeless man, only to later find out it’s Richard Gere, resulting in her name and face being seen in papers all over the world!
Karine Gombeau, the 42-year old French tourist, performed this random act of kindness in Little Italy after spotting a destitute-looking man digging through a trash bin and drinking a beer from a brown paper bag. ‘He said “Thank you so much. God bless you.”‘ recalled Gombeau.
She did not know until she saw herself in a newspaper two days later that the man she gave her leftovers to was Gere, the Hollywood movie star. The Pretty Woman and An Officer and a Gentleman actor is reportedly worth $100 million. So why was he mistaken for a homeless man? Gere was in Manhattan filming for his next movie, Time Out of Mind, in which he plays a vagrant. While filming the movie, which also stars Catching Fire‘s Jena Malone and The Closer’s Kyra Sedgwick, both Gere and Sedgwick have been staying in character between scenes.
Gere supposedly did such a good job staying in character that other passersby’s reported to the NY Post that it did not appear he was acting as he fished around out of garbage cans, even eating french fries he found in one. Reportedly, Gere was actually being filmed by cameras positioned far away from him, allowing him to wander through Grand Central Station without people realizing that a shoot was actually in progress.
Time Out of Mind tells the story of a New Yorker (Gere) trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Malone), while also struggling to get his life back on track after circumstances have landed him in a homeless shelter. The film is being directed by The Messenger’s Owen Moverman.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
