Joy Is All Around Richard Gere

Actor Says Fatherhood Taught Him The Power Of Goofiness And Joy

(CBS)  Actor Richard Gere says his life took off the moment he met someone he could trust - his wife, Carey Lowell.

And the most important thing he has learned since becoming a father in the last four years is the power of goofiness and joy, he tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

"And with that comes the other things - comes patience and a lot of different stuff, but just joy. Just life is joy and it's all around us. You usually don't pay any attention to it because we're so busy doing our lives, but joy and the core of that is love. Love, connection," he says.

Gere appeared on The Early Show to promote his new movie "Shall We Dance?" - about a businessman leading a life of quiet desperation who finds the missing joy in his life when he secretly takes ballroom dance lessons.

Gere compared the lead character in the movie, a remake of a 1997 Japanse film, to Smith. "He looks like you. Not that you have quiet desperation, but it's a guy. He's a suit. Right? It's a suit. He goes home in a train."

Smith responded, "You know, I'm going to take this as a compliment that Richard Gere looks like me. Always everybody wanted to know who Richard Gere looks like - and now we know."

After the businessman finds a dance partner and starts intensive preparations for the dance competition, his wife suspects he is having an affair.

"One of the setups of this movie is this is a very functional family. It's not a dysfunctional marriage. It's two very strong people who talk with each other and have a sense of humor and have got the dog and kids and the house and the job and the stuff of the American dreamm," Gere says. "They got it, but there is something missing that's undefined and it's mysterious to even him, what he's feeling in the process, and much of the film is him figuring out what that is. It's still missing and still yearning."

Does Gere's character seek romance, or does he love to dance?

"Whatever it is, it's not what you think!" he says.