OUT100: Richard Chamberlain

Photography by JUCO | Retouching by Anna Glen at Wet Noodle

The Moment: August 18, 1930: Noel Coward's play Private Lives premieres in Edinburgh.

Whether you remember him from Dr. Kildare in the '60s or as a sexy priest in The Thorn Birds in the '80s, Richard Chamberlain is a legend. Now 80, he returned to the stage this fall for the Off-Broadway production of David Rabe's Sticks and Bones.

Though he'd been in a relationship for years, it wasn't until 2003 that Chamberlain decided to publicly address being gay. "Remaining in hiding was a totally valuable part of my life," he says. "I was a romantic lead in films at a time before some of the new relaxations and new diminishment of total ignorance. 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 somebody else."

Photographed at the Stanford White Studio at the Chatwal Hotel, New York on September 17, 2014

Styling by Michael Cook. Groomer: Angela DiCarlo. Jacket and cardigan by Perry Ellis

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