21 American Gigolo (1980)
Actor who stripped down: Richard Gere
Why they’re fully nude: It’s a living.
Full frontal nudity is an equal opportunity sport in American Gigolo, Paul Schrader’s iconic ’80s tale of popular male prostitute Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) and his rotating stable of lonely and able-bodied housewives. Julian is a shallow man operating in a shallow world—one where flashy clothes and cars are the main attraction. But when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation following a particularly kinky gig with a married couple, Julian’s bells and whistles start to tarnish and fade; in order to clear his name he must strip it all away until there’s nothing left—not even his boxers.
Though it’s widely recognized as the first film in which a big-name actor appears entirely in the buff, that was never the intention. It was Gere himself who made the decision—one, he claims, that evolved naturally during the course of filming. “If I recall, [the nudity] wasn’t in the script,” Gere told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. “It was just in the natural process of making the movie.”
