RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN - CHAMBERLAIN: 'I HAD TO KEEP MY SEXUALITY A SECRET'

CHAMBERLAIN: 'I HAD TO KEEP MY SEXUALITY A SECRET'

Veteran actor RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN has no regrets about keeping his homosexuality a secret, because he is certain he would never have had a Hollywood career had he been openly gay. The Shogun star, 73, eventually revealed his sexuality in 2003 and is under no illusions that 'coming out' in the 1960s would have stopped his acting career dead in its tracks. He says, "If I'd gone public in the beginning, I would have been finished. "It was the big, painful secret of my life and I couldn't talk about it when I was playing leading men." Despite keeping his sexuality a secret, studio bosses knew about his sexuality. Chamberlain adds, "Oh Hollywood knew - they knew right off. I don't know how they knew because I was pretty careful, but Hollywood knew. "It's almost not interesting. That's what I've come to realise in my own life, that the fact that I'm gay is not an interesting thing really. "Yet still in America there's a lot of misconceptions about gayness."