Richard Gere talks about improvising the sexy piano scene from “Pretty Woman”

Richard Gere celebrated his 75th birthday with his enthusiastic fans at a master class hosted by Cartier at the Venice Film Festival and gave some behind-the-scenes insights into the filming of his 1990 box office hit “Pretty Woman,” which catapulted Julia Roberts to stardom.

Reacting to a clip of his steamy piano scene with Roberts, Gere laughed and blushed at the palpable chemistry between him and the actor.

“No chemistry,” he laughed. “I mean, there was obviously no chemistry between this actor and this actress… I haven't seen that in a long time. It was a sexy, sexy scene.”

Gere then said the scene was improvised. “It was never in the script. … We didn't know how we were going to use it later. It ended up being an integral part of the movie,” said Gere, who also joked that he was “playing a character that was almost criminally under-equipped. It was basically just a suit and a good haircut.” He said the idea for the scene came to him after the director asked him to imagine what his character would do during their time at the hotel.

“We basically improvised that scene. I just started playing something moody that was about the inner life of this character,” said Gere, who plays Edward, a wealthy but lonely businessman who hires escort Vivian (paid by Roberts) to accompany him to social events. Eventually he falls in love with her.

But ultimately, the piano scene added depth to the story because Roberts' character “could see him in a whole different way. This guy had a mysterious longing and maybe a damaged side that she didn't know about.” In the scene, Edward is playing the piano in the ballroom of the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in the middle of the night when Vivian, who has fallen asleep watching “I Love Lucy” on TV, comes in wearing a bathrobe. He asks the staff to leave her alone and sits her on the piano before they start making out.

The film was made on a budget of $14 million and grossed $463.4 million worldwide. But Gere said he, Roberts and Marshall did not expect such a runaway success. “We had fun making it. The whole time we were filming, we didn't know if anyone would ever see it.”

The actor, who will be honored with the Award of Inspiration at the AmfAR gala, discussed the art and craft of filmmaking at the master class, from acting, screenwriting, lighting, dubbing to musical composition.

He spoke about one of the biggest challenges of his career, playing a Japanese-American character in Akira Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August. Although he learned Japanese in the film, his casting as a half-Asian character sparked some backlash at the time. He said the experience of acting in the film was difficult because, although he was “very proud” to have been cast in the role by Kurosawa (whom he called a “true genius”), he kept thinking that he “[had] to do something to become Japanese.”

“I spent the day doing things, putting on prosthetics, moving my eyes and doing different things like that, and I could see [Kurosawa] shook his head and looked over. And finally I called his first director over. I asked, “So what does Kurosawa say?” He said, “I don't know what Richard is trying to do, because to me he looks completely Japanese.”

Gere was at Cannes this year in Paul Schrader's “Oh Canada.” In the film, which reunites Gere with Schrader for the first time since 1980's “American Gigolo,” the actor plays a terminally ill writer and filmmaker who sits down for one final interview to reveal the unvarnished facts of his life.

Gere, who will soon be seen opposite Michael Fassbender in “The Agency,” the U.S. remake of the French spy thriller “Le Bureau des Legendes,” said he is working on a project with his son Homer, who attended the master class with him.

“It’s a father-son story getting to know each other and getting to know each other,” he said.