Richard Gere, Padma Lakshmi split, ‘would be better as friends’

Richard Gere and Padma Lakshmi are no longer dating. Incidentally, Richard Gere and Padma Lakshmi have actually been dating.

The actor and the “Top Chef” host were rumored to be an item since April, and now the same outlet that broke that news is saying they’re done.

A source told Page Six that the two, both busy with work, have “decided they would be better as friends.”

In April, Page Six reported that the two had “been quietly spending some time together. It is all very new and recent, and happened while he has been filming in New York.”

Lakshmi, 44, was said to be approaching the relationshiop with Gere, 65, “very, very delicately,” a source told Us Weekly around the same time. “They’re just getting to know each other. They’re just having fun.”

They were spotted together in August as well.

Gere was reportedly the first person she’d dated since her financier beau Teddy Forstmann died of brain cancer in 2011; she and Forstmann were involved starting in 2009.

Lakshmi had been married to author Salman Rushdie from 2004 into 2007. She has a daughter, Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell, born in February 2010, with venture capitalist Adam Dell, whom she’d dated for a couple of years. Dell’s status as Krishna’s biological father was established via DNA testing and a custody agreement was reached in March 2012. Forstmann left a trust fund in the girl’s name when he died at age 71.

Gere and his second wife, actress Carey Lowell, separated last year, with word that they were headed for divorce going public in September 2013. They’d been together since 1995, got married in 2002 and have a son together, 14-year-old Homer.

The “Officer and a Gentleman” and “Runaway Bride” star said last week that the breakup with Lowell helped with his performance in his newest movie, “Time Out of Mind,” which is currently on the film festival circuit.

“What probably really helped was that I was right in the middle of a divorce ...,” he said. “The emotions were right on the surface.”

Gere was first married to model Cindy Crawford. They divorced in 1995, with Crawford marrying businessman Rande Gerber in 1998. Crawford and Gerber are notably best pals with George Clooney and his new wife, Amal Clooney (yup, she seems to have changed her last name from Alamuddin, at least according to her employer).

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