Richard Chamberlain obituary

Richard Chamberlain, who has died today at the age of 90, shot to fame as TV heartthrob Dr Kildare in the 1960s.

His dashing good looks won him legions of female fans, and guaranteed him work in a plethora of rather forgettable television movies.

But, in middle age, his career spiked again.

Chamberlain became king of the 1980’s TV mini-series: playing a western prisoner in Shogun and a catholic priest tempted by love in The Thorn Birds.

He denied being gay when confronted by a French magazine in 1989, and did not speak publicly about his homosexuality until he turned 70.

In interviews promoting his 2003 memoir, he advised other handsome leading actors to keep their sexuality to themselves.

“There’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture,” he said. “Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.”

George Richard Chamberlain was born on 31 March, 1934, in Beverly Hills, California. He died one day before his 91st birthday.

His salesman father had a problem with drink, which affected young Richard’s childhood. He described himself as a “shy, serious, lugubrious kid, painfully thin, with a long, sad face”.

He admitted to being the most “uncooperative kid in school” but discovered a taste and a talent for athletics.

At Pomona College, he was bitten by the acting bug – and a role in Bernard Shaw’s Ants and Men convinced him he had found his calling.

Paramount Studios was interested in him, but thoughts of an acting career were put on hold after he was called up, serving 16 months as a sergeant with the US Army during the Korean War.

On his discharge, he made a number of cameos in TV shows, including an episode of the popular Western, Gunsmoke.

Not everyone had Chamberlain picked as a future star.

He was handsome enough: with profiles at the time gushing over his “fine-lined aristocratic face, suggesting a young Florentine noble – straight out of the Renaissance”.

But, he was naturally diffident – which worked in his favour when he auditioned to play Dr James Kildare, a medical intern struggling to learn his profession, in NBC’s new primetime medical drama.

“Perhaps it was inevitable,” said one friend-and-rival. “Who else could look so anti-sceptic as Dick?”

The series ran for nearly 200 programmes across five seasons.

It broke new ground, by raising matters such as drug addiction – which had not previously been shown on US TV.

There was a huge reaction from female fans.

Chamberlain got 12,000 letters a week. In Pittsburgh, 450,000 people turned out to see him at a parade, and in New York, he nearly caused a riot when a child spotted him and called his name.

The studio made the most of this attention, releasing novels, comics and games featuring Chamberlain’s image.

Fans would even write in asking “Dr Kildare” to solve their various medical problems.

And Chamberlain had an unlikely hit single: Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, where romantic words were added to the show’s distinctive opening theme tune.

He won a Golden Globe Award for best TV actor in 1963. But, three years later audiences began to wane, and NBC pulled the plug.

Now an international star, Chamberlain struggled to leave Kildare behind.

In 1966, he hoped to break into films, but reviews slated his performance in the light romantic comedy, Joy in the Morning.

Audiences, they said, laughed in “all the wrong places”. So, he resolved to ignore Hollywood and make a living on the stage.

He got off to a rocky start when a musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s – in which he starred opposite Mary Tyler Moore – closed after just four shows.

The production is still seen as one of Broadway’s biggest ever turkeys. But a move to England gave him a chance of reinventing himself as a ‘serious actor.’

In 1967, there were starring roles in Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady and opposite Katherine Hepburn in a satirical comedy called The Madwoman of Chaillot.

And, two years later, he became the first American to play Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre since the great John Barrymore in 1925.

This time, the reviews were excellent and he revisited the role of Denmark’s most tortured prince for a television version for Hallmark.

But Chamberlain was cast as Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s overblown biopic, The Music Lovers, in which he starred opposite Glenda Jackson.

The critics rubbished the film, in which great play was made of the relationship between a composer with repressed homosexual tendencies and his nymphomaniac wife, although it later became something of a cult success.

Chamberlain went on to play Lord Byron opposite Sarah Miles in Lady Caroline Lamb and the swashbuckling French swordsman Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers.

He also appeared – along with half of Hollywood – in the Towering Inferno, as a crooked electrical engineer whose corner-cutting leads to the spectacular destruction of a 138 floor building.

In 1977, the TV series Roots – set in the era of American slavery – drew huge audiences and was nominated for nearly 40 Emmy awards.

It sparked a revival of the mini-series which drew Chamberlain back to television.

He beat Roger Moore and Albert Finney to be cast as John Blackthorn – a captive English navigator in 17th Century Japan – in Shogun.

The series was shown on NBC over five nights in 1980, with audiences reaching nearly 30 million.

Having won a Golden Globe, Chamberlain then picked up another as Father Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds, a priest torn between God and his sexual longing afor the actress, Rachel Ward.

It was even more successful than Shogun, winning an audience of 60% of television viewers and 16 Emmy nominations.

In the 1990s, Chamberlain’s career began to wane.

There were a succession of solid, rather than outstanding, performances in made-for-TV films and endless guest appearances in other people’s shows.

These included a sequel to The Thorn Birds called The Missing Years, with Amanda Donohoe replacing Rachel Ward.

In 2003, long after he had stopped playing romantic leading men, Chamberlain published his biography Shattered Love, in which, for the first time, he confirmed he was gay.

Despite a relationship of more than 30 years with the actor and director Martin Rabbett, with whom he’d once starred in the film Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, they had kept their private life private.

“I thought there was something very, very deeply wrong with me,” he said, “and I wanted to cover it up. I remember making a pact with myself that I would never, ever reveal this secret, ever.”

Chamberlain and Rabbett went their separate ways in 2010.

In later years, Chamberlain was happy to play a gay man, notably in Desperate Housewives and Will & Grace.

He continued to perform in musical theatre, including touring productions of Spamalot, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.

But he never regretted hiding his sexuality to protect his career.

“I would have been a happier person being out of the closet and being free,” he told El Pais in 2024. “But I had other motives that made me happy. I was a working actor and for me, that was most important.”

He will be remembered as the king of the TV mini-series: the dashing leading man in everything from Dr Kildare to The Thorn Birds.

Despite attempts to reinvent himself as a serious stage actor, he was at his best on the small screen, entertaining millions watching at home on the sofa.

For, although there were always better actors than Richard Chamberlain, few rivalled his ability to hold a television audience.