(Image source from: Iconic Hollywood actor mistaken as a beggar})

Guess which Hollywood star was the recent victim of an mistaken identity? It's none other than the "Pretty Woman" swashbuckler, Richard Gere.

The actor-philanthropist was mistaken as a homeless beggar by a French tourist recently. She spotted him rummaging through a trash can in the streets of New York and offered pizza to him.

But little did she know that the man she mistook for a tramp was in actuality Hollywood icon Richard Gere shooting for his film, "Time Out of Mind".

Karine Valnais Gombeau, spotted the actor digging through a trash bin and drinking a beer from a brown paper bag, as she came out of a pizzeria near Grand Central station in Manhattan.

I said "Je suis desolee [I am sorry], but the pizza is cold"' Gombeau said, who approached the 62 year-old actor with the leftover pizza. The pizza was carried in a plastic 'I Love NY' bag.

"He said, 'Thank you so much. God bless you,'" she said.

She left without knowing it was Gere until she saw herself in a newspaper two days later.

"It was magical...It's crazy, this story. It's unimaginable that something like this could happen," she said, adding she thought Gere, the star of Pretty Woman and Chicago, was "very handsome, even at his age."

AW: Suchorita Choudhury