Richard Gere explained his decision to leave Hollywood behind and move to Spain with wife Alejandra Silva and their sons. Here’s what the Pretty Woman star revealed.

Richard Gere is saying adios to Hollywood.

Indeed, the Runaway Bride star shared his plans to move to Spain with wife Alejandra Silva and their family, playfully telling Jimmy Fallon that their relocation is “world news.”

“My wife is Spanish and—is this a problem for anybody out there?” the actor joked on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Nov. 20 as members of the audience gasped. “Of course I’ll be back!”

The 75-year-old continued, “My wife is Spanish and she gave me about seven years here, so we’re going to spend some years in Madrid.”

The couple, who wed in 2018, share sons Alexander, 5, and James, 4, as well as Homer, 24, whom Richard shares with ex-wife Carey Lowell, and Albert, 11, from Alejandra’s marriage to Govind Friedland. Despite the distance from their home in America, the An Officer and a Gentleman alum gave a good reason why the move should be a smooth transition for the family.

“Our kids are bilingual,” he added, “so they’re gonna flourish there.”

Richard further teased his wife’s big plans for their new home as they’ll be closer to her family.

“My wife, she grew up in a very big Spanish family, like a big Italian family,” he shared. “Her grandmother was kind of the glue that held that altogether, and the grandmother passed away about a year and a half ago, two years ago. So my wife, I can see her morphing into the new grandmother of this extended family. She’s already planning for, you know, 35 people for Sunday lunches.”

Earlier this year, the Pretty Woman star shared insight into how he feels about the big move.

“For me, going to Madrid is going to be a great adventure,” he told Vanity Fair Spain in April, “because I have never lived full-time outside the United States. And I think it will be very interesting for my children as well. For Alejandra, it will be wonderful to be closer to her family, her lifelong friends and her culture.”

Of course, Richard isn’t the first celeb to step away from the City of Angels. Keep reading to see other stars who have said goodbye to the bright lights of Hollywood.

(E! News and The Tonight Show are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)

Ian Somerhalder

The Vampire Diaries alum hasn’t sunk his teeth into a new role since Netflix’s 2019 series V-Wars. Instead, the dad of two (with wife Nikki Reed) has dug a little deeper into a passion project, namely his mission to combat climate change by improving the world’s soil.

“I stepped away from acting a little over four years ago to raise my kids, build my companies and get these films launched,” Somerhalder told E! News in November 2023 of launching the 2020 documentary Kiss the Ground and its follow up Common Ground, each detailing the need for regenerative farming.

When he looks years down the road, he continued, “I will be a rancher and building legacy brands, whether it’s my bourbon or my health and wellness company, and the regenerative agriculture and healthy soil management practices that I live by and our family lives by. That’s where my life was going. So when people say ‘Why do you care?’ That’s why I care. Because that’s who I am, that’s what I’m going to become.”

Evangeline Lilly

The Ant-Man and the Wasp star announced she’s taking an indefinite hiatus from acting after 20 years in the industry.

“I am so filled with joy and contentment today as I live out my vision,” Evangeline wrote on Instagram June 3. “I feel so grateful for my blessings. Stepping away from what seems like the obvious choice (wealth and fame) can feel scary at times, but stepping into your dharma replaces the fear with fulfillment.”

But she isn’t necessarily shutting the door, either, adding, “I might return to Hollywood one day, but, for now, this is where I belong.”

Jennette McCurdy

On a February 2021 episode of her podcast Empty Inside, the iCarly alum told guest Anna Faris that she decided to stop acting a few years back and is now focused on opportunities in writing and directing, in addition to hosting the podcast.

“My experience with acting is, I’m so ashamed of the parts I’ve done in the past,” revealed Jennette, who detailed her experience in her 2022 memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. “I resent my career in a lot of ways. I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most cheesy, embarrassing. I did the shows that I was on from like 13 to 21, and by 15, I was already embarrassed. My friends at 15, they’re not like, ‘Oh, cool, you’re on this Nickelodeon show.’ It was embarrassing.”

Though she hasn’t totally written off a second act. “I do feel like only through writing the book have I gotten to a place where I think there might be a way of exploring acting that doesn’t carry that baggage that I carried with me for so long,” she told E! News in October 2022. “Maybe if I write something for myself. I think that’d really be maybe one of the only ways I could kind of try exploring it again.”