There are rumors, then there are rumors – and Richard Gere is the subject of one of the wildest tales in the entertainment industry. Somehow, it also pulled Sylvester Stallone into its orbit and continues to be a story that has everybody talking about it decades later.
In 1990, Pretty Woman turned into a massive movie around the world and raised Gere’s popularity among the general audience even further. However, the actor had to contend with a fake press release that spread like wildfire. It was so silly and blatantly untrue, but still found an audience. This piece of “news” claimed that Gere had to go to a hospital to have a gerbil removed from his backside after having shoved it up there for pleasure.
Since then, Snopes confirmed this urban legend to be false, but it refused to ever go away. It’s one of those tall tales that get passed around as fact, such as how Marilyn Manson had a rib removed for his own self-gratification and Britney Spears had to have her stomach pumped after consuming too much love potion. In other words, these stories are completely false and unbelievable, but they’re juicy and sensational, so people choose to believe and tell others about them.
It gets crazier, though. Before Gere had become a star, he worked with a pre-fame Sylvester Stallone on 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush. Gere had been cast as Chico in the movie, but an incident with Stallone over Gere spilling mustard and Stallone elbowing him in the head resulted in Gere being replaced by Perry King. This incident created bad blood between Gere and Stallone that ran for ages.
“The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay,” Stallone told Ain’t It Cool News. “Richard was given his walking papers and to this day seriously dislikes me. He even thinks I’m the individual responsible for the gerbil rumor. Not true… but that’s the rumor.”
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Publicly, Gere never said anything accusing Stallone of the gerbil story – maybe it happened in the Hollywood circles? – so it’s interesting that Stallone brought it up unprovoked here. Stallone denies it, of course, but it’s hilarious to think about how a petty feud over mustard evolved into this silly urban legend that still gets passed around to this day.
In 2026, The Hollywood Reporter released a podcast, exploring the nature of the Richard Gere-gerbil rumor. It’s actually an entertaining, insightful, and funny series to listen to, so check it out if you want to go down the rabbit hole here. Although, there’s still one question that nobody’s answered: what did the gerbil think of being associated with Gere in such a fashion?
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Gerbil is out now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeart, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.
The rumor existed long before Pretty Woman, as did the Rod Stewart stomach pump story (not sure when that was changed to Brittany Spearas)