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Richard Chamberlain doesn’t regret choosing success in his career over being openly gay

Richard Chamberlain – one of my all-time heartthrobs – was nearly 70 when in 2003 he publicly acknowledged that he was gay.

By that time, he had been a major star for more than four decades and the leading man in the classic TV miniseries The Thorn Birds and Shogun as well as the hit 60s television series Dr. Kildare.

Now 80, Chamberlain says he has no regrets over his decision to stay in the closet.

‘Remaining in hiding was a totally valuable part of my life,’ he says in the current issue of Out Magazine. ‘I was a romantic lead in films at a tome before some of the new relaxations and new diminishment of total ignorance.’

While he has always worked steadily in television, Chamberlain’s film career peaked in the 1970s with such movies as The Three Musketeers, The Towering Inferno and The Count of Monte Cristo.

‘If I were ever outed, my career – which was my entire life, for the longest time – wouldn’t have happened. I spent a great deal of my life pretending to be someone else.’

Even though such openly gay actors as Ian McKellen, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Neil Patrick Harris are getting film roles, Hollywood has yet to embrace any of them as a romantic lead who carries a film.

Chamberlain continues to act on television and has even played gay men on Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives and Nip/Tuck.

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3 Remarks

  1. Richard Chamberlain and Johnny Mathis were the first two men I fell in love with, as a little boy in the first grade. Even at that young age I sensed something different in them. That said, it was a different time. For them to come out would have been considered vulgar. Everyone knew, but nobody wanted to talk about it.

  2. What was that song Johnny Mathas always sang……….. What would my Mary say! If I don’t leave I’ll be sorry, What would my Mary say, I must be going, don’t go………..

    A bit fragmented, but, classic Johnny Mathis! Yeh he was hot back then and I did’nt even know I was gay, or did I???!!

  3. I have never forgotten Richard’s beautiful singing and sexy shirtless scene in “Joy In The Morning”. Thanks for the posting.

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