Gay Richard Chamberlain advises other gays to stay in the closet

Actor George Richard Chamberlain, who managed to keep his homosexuality a secret for decades, has advised other gay men who are in the same profession as him to "stay in the closet".

Chamberlain, 76, who gained fame in the early 1960s as the impossibly handsome Dr Kildare, had worked as a romantic leading man on TV without revealing his homosexuality.

"There's still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture," the New York Post quoted him as telling The Advocate, a monthly magazine.

"For an actor to be working at all is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren't. So it's just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don't care if anybody knows I'm gay' especially if you're a leading man.

"Personally, I wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out," he added.

Chamberlain had only come out in 2003, at the age of 69, and he made the admission in his autobiography, Shattered Love, published that year.