CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Richard Chamberlain Discusses His Hollywood's Closet

80-year-old Richard Chamberlain has been in the public eye for well over a half-century, since he bewitched audiences with his appearance on Dr. Kildare in 1961 as doctor on the hit television series. However, even as Chamberlain became a Hollywood heart throb and all through the peak of his celebrity he maintained a secret: he was a gay man.

He eventually came out about a decade ago in his 2003 memoir Shattered Love but now Chamberlain is discussing his Hollywood career with the Bay Area Reporter from the perspective of looking back on it as an openly gay man.

"I knew I was gay at age 11 or 12, but I grew up in the 1930s and 40s, when being gay was not an option. I spent a lot of time trying to be someone else. My friends knew, but in Hollywood I was a romantic leading man, so I always lived in fear of being outed. When I started writing my book at age 65, I thought it would be a guide-to-life kind of thing, but my partner at the time and my publisher said, 'You've got to make it personal, and being gay is part of the story.' "While I was writing, it was almost as if an angel walked into the room and said, 'Richard, it's over. All this fear, this self-loathing is just stupid.' The message got right into my bones, and all the fear and self-loathing vanished."

Hat/tip Joe Jervis