Step out in style...

And yet the workday is always the same routine, the commute is a grind and the family is usually too busy to spend time together. Sometimes John wonders if this is all there is, until one evening on his way home from work he gets off his train and does the unthinkable. Without telling a soul, he secretly begins taking dance lessons. Suddenly, John is thrust into a whole new world of motion, music, camaraderie and passion. As this very serious man becomes literally light on his feet, his whole life, and marriage, transforms.

The uplifting and comic story of a man's renewal, Shall We Dance? is inspired by the runaway Japanese hit of the same name.

It all begins when John Clark is riding the evening train, and spots out of his window a young dance teacher (Jennifer Lopez) staring back at him from the run-down Miss Mitzi's Studio. Haunted by her gaze, John looks for her night after night. Finally, he gets off the train and signs up for the beginner's series of ballroom dance lessons. At his first class, John spends more time on the floor than gliding across it.

Awkward and shy, it seems unlikely he will ever find any grace at all. But soon, dance becomes John's obsession, his escape, his one means of pure joy. He is drawn further and further into this exotic realm, even discovering a fellow employee who's also hiding his ballroom dance habit (Stanley Tucci).

Yet John cannot seem to tell his wife Beverly about his new-found love out of fear that she'll think he's unfulfilled by their marriage. As he clandestinely prepares for Chicago's biggest dance competition, his secretive behaviour causes Beverly to hire a detective, suspecting that her husband is having an affair. But John will soon discover that it isn't enough to chase his most private dreams because the best part is sharing them.

The role of lawyer John Clark appealed to Gere who, like his character, was initially drawn to the alluring image of a girl staring out of the window and all the what-if's and what-might-have-beens such an image arouses.

"I felt that this was the kind of experience that everyone has had at one time or another, riding in a car, or in a plane or a train, where you suddenly see this person and you become aware of this whole other world out there that you could be a part of," says Gere.

"The interesting part is that most of us turn away, while John decides to explore it which leads to something very positive for him."

He continues: "I don't think in the beginning John can even pinpoint anything that is wrong in his life or marriage. It's more of a distant dissatisfaction he can't put his finger on. And the challenge as an actor was figuring out how to show that. Melancholy isn't something you can play exactly you can't paint melancholy on a face. So I approached the feeling inside John more as a kind of itch, a kind of inner agitation he doesn't really understand at first, that drives him to do something that seems pretty crazy in his world, but that expands his whole life in a new direction."

Gere was also drawn to the theme of Shall We Dance?, which he describes as "learning to become the person you dream of yourself being." He especially liked the idea of joining an ensemble of actors who each discover new sides to themselves both comic and serious through their willingness to let it all go while they dance.

"Every character at the studio has their own quirks and oddities, and Miss Mitzi's becomes its own wonderful little world of outcasts," comments Gere.

Jennifer Lopez was intrigued by the script not only because of the dancing, but because of its picture of ordinary people finding extraordinary inspiration in their lives. "I loved the portrait of these different types of people from many walks of life all coming together to fulfil some long lost dream," she says.

"The dance studio becomes a place where they can find out who they are, what they want and what's missing from their lives. And, most of all, dance gives them a beautiful place to go, to forget about things, and just fly above it all."

Stanley Tucci took the role of Link Peterson, an office geek by day at John's law firm who has an outrageous alter ego that emerges when he is practising his beloved Latin dances at night.

Tucci was eager to play the lively comic role that is a departure from anything he's done before. "I love Link as a character, because to me, no one is just one person, no one is just whom they present to the public or to their family. Everyone has some secret part of themselves they they've always wanted to express," he says.