They kept it secret from the public eye but after six months of that whirlwind romance, Richard Gere and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi finally call it quits. Reports on Page Six confirmed from a television interview that the TV host is single again.

 A source close to the couple said that both have decided that they better be friends for now and should carry on with their lives. Further, the source said that both are busy with work.

This year, the 65-year old actor has been working on several film productions. He currently finished "Time Out of Mind", a semi-documentary movie project with an unconventional storyline with Israeli-American director and screenwriter Oren Moverman. In this movie, the veteran actor takes the shoes of a senior, homeless man who has to sit in a busy corner in Manhattan and ask for alms from passersby.

The movie which has the elements of a social experiment also documents scenarios and interviews from homeless people in New York. The film received warm reviews from critics in the Toronto Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.

Meanwhile, the Top Chef host is said to be busy being in the set for next season's Top Chef in Boston. She has also been busy travelling.

Reports from First Post said that the couple started dating while the award-winning actor is on the way of getting a divorce from his wife of 11 years Carey Lowell last spring. However, both are very keen at keeping their relationship very private as they are not seen in a single photograph nor have mentioned in any of their interviews in the entire dating period.

"They have been quietly spending some time together. It is all very new and recent," sources from Page Six reported on April this year.

As of this week, representatives of both parties are not available to comment for the breakup.

Lakshmi has a three-year old daughter Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell from her marriage with brother of the computer maker, Michael Dell. She has also dated the author Salman Rushdie and the late Teddy Forstmann, a billionaire who died of brain cancer.