Washington, Sept 17: Richard Gere used to check his compatibility with potential girlfriends by showing them photos of body parts and severed heads.

The Pretty Woman star confessed that he used to accumulate Joel Peter Witkin's eerie photographs and used to hang them all over his apartment.

"It clearly was a litmus test about the women who came into my apartment - how they related to this work,” Contactmusic quoted him, as saying.

Gere would judge his dates' outlook to the bizarre snaps and that would help him resolve whether or not the romance was fated to work.

“If they didn't like it or they threw up, or whatever, they definitely were not going to be someone in my life," he said.

Gere's wife Carey Lowell was smart enough to fool the actor at his own quest when they started dating as she pretended to like the "crazy" photos.

He explained, "My wife Carey actually kind of liked it - until we got married, of course, and then she said, 'Get it out of the house,'" (With Inputs from ANI)