Roberts convinced Gere to star in Pretty Woman

Although Al Pacino came close to landing the role, it seems Julia Roberts was determined to have Richard Gere as her on-screen partner.

She practically pleaded with Richard Gere in a very genuine way.

”He’s a very serious actor and he had very specific thoughts about the movie and the part and what worked and didn’t work for him,” she told SiriusXM in 2017.

”I think I just nodded and smiled a lot and agreed with everything he said. I said, ‘You have to do this movie, if you don’t do this movie and it falls apart and I lose this job it’ll just be terrible.’”

And this is how it all went down according to Richard Gere:

“I still didn’t know if I was doing this movie. We’re getting to know each other, we’re flirty, flirty…nice, nice…She’s across the desk, she takes a piece of paper, and she’s writing something on it and she turns it around and pushes it to me…‘Please say yes’”.

Even in a fairytale romance, things don’t always go as planned. Maybe that’s just what makes this movie so endearing —and keeps us coming back for another look, year after year.