Richard Gere on holiday in wife's Galicia home town

PRETTY Woman star Richard Gere has been seen on holiday in the Galicia coastal town of Oleiros (A Coruña province), where his wife Alejandra Silva was born and grew up.

The couple, their two small boys and Alejandra's son Albert, were spotted out for a walk near Sra Silva's childhood home on the Bastiagueiro beach, and dining in the well-known El Refugio restaurant with Alejandra's mother.

Actor Richard and PR executive Alejandra were, naturally, stopped and asked for selfies, but they have always been very protective of their private life and were said to have 'politely refused'.

Although the couple lives in the USA, they have forged strong links with Alejandra's country of birth – before they met, Gere already owned the Buddhist centre in the northern Alicante-province town of Pedreguer, and jointly, they run homeless shelters Sra Silva set up in Madrid and the Basque Country through her Rais Foundation.

They spent considerable time in Spain in the year they married, attempting to raise awareness of poverty and homelessness, including meeting with national president Pedro Sánchez.

As part of his drive to highlight the issue, Richard Gere directed and played the lead rôle in two films – Norman: The moderate rise and tragic fall of a New York fixer, in 2017, and Time out of mind, in 2014 – both of which characters, Norman and George respectively, were living rough on the streets.

Otherwise, the celebrity couple prefers to stay behind the scenes when off duty, and are not even very active on social media.

The last time they posted a picture of themselves together on Instagram – where Silva uses her married name of Alejandra Gere – was two years ago, to pledge their support for the migrant sea rescue charity Open Arms, telling the aid workers 'our hearts are with you' (shown above, from @alejandragere on Instagram).

Gere, 72, and Silva, 38, have been married since April 2018 and have a son, Alexander, aged two-and-a-half, together, and another one-year-old boy born during 2020 lockdown but whose name has not been made public yet.

They each have one son from previous marriages – Alejandra's ex-husband, mining tycoon Govind Friedland, is the father of her eight-year-old boy Albert, and Gere, who was married to model Cindy Crawford and later actress Carey Lowell, has a child with the latter, Homer James, aged 21.

Businesswoman Alejandra was managing a luxury hotel in Positano on the Italian Riviera when she met Richard Gere in 2015, and she says he kept sending her flowers until she agreed to go on a date with him.

Alejandra moved to New York to be with Richard, and converted to his religion, Buddhism.

Both call themselves the luckiest person in the universe to have each other.