!! OMG, quote of the day: Anderson Cooper says Richard Gere helped him realize he was gay !!

“And they took me to see Richard Gere in Bent, which if anyone doesn’t know about the play Bent, it’s about two gay guys in the concentration camp,” Cooper recounted. “I mean the opening scene… It is the gayest thing you can imagine.

“And this was Richard Gere in 1977, Looking for Mr. Goodbar. He was so beautiful. And I’m there. My mom didn’t go. It was just me and my mom’s two gay friends,” he continued.

He explained how the opening scene features a man getting out of bed naked, after sleeping with another man, and putting on an SS uniform.

“And I just remember being like, ‘Oh my God, I’m gay. … I’m totally gay.’ And afterward, Paul Jasmin was friends with Richard Gere,” he said. “Cause Paul Jasmin took the pictures for American Gigolo and we go backstage and Richard Gere is shirtless in his dressing room.

“And I couldn’t speak. And I had my Playbill and I wanted to get him to autograph it, but I was too — I just couldn’t stop staring at his chest. And so, fast forward to 10 years ago, I was interviewing Richard Gere and I took out the Playbill … and I told him the whole story and I had him sign it. Yeah. He was very tickled with it,” Cooper added.

“I stupidly said, ‘I think I’m gay.’ I should have… but I wanted to couch it. And she said, ‘Huh. Well, don’t make any definite decisions.’”

“It was kind of surprising,” Cooper agrees. “She was cool about it but she was like, ‘Don’t make any definite decisions, which was not the response I was expecting.”

– Anderson Cooper, on when photographer Paul Jasmin and his boyfriend took Cooper, to see a Broadway performance of the play Bent. He recalls being aged 11 at the time he saw it.