By Bettijane Levine, Los Angeles Times, Globe Staff, 6/22/2003 

LOS ANGELES -- Richard Chamberlain is ready for his close-up. Buffed and preened, he far outshines the tacky tan blandness of his hotel room. Chin up, chin down, head slightly left, now right. As a photographer clicks, he makes the tiny robotic shifts and switches brilliant smiles on and off like a light bulb. Chamberlain has finally aged a bit, after decades of what some incorrectly perceived as surgically induced youthfulness. But he is still the matinee idol, king of what used to be called ''prestige television,'' the world's reigning crowned head of the mega-hit TV miniseries. 

To millions, he remains indelible as Father Ralph de Bricassart, the conflicted young priest of ''The Thorn Birds'' (1983), and as John Blackthorne, the conquering hero of ''Shogun'' (1980). Both miniseries are still popular enough to air 20 years later. (''Shogun'' starts July 13 on the Hallmark Channel.) 

To millions of others, who saw him on worldwide theatrical tours through the 1990s, he is Baron von Trapp or Henry Higgins. Or maybe Cyrano, Richard II, or Hamlet. 

His latest incarnation will be as a Canadian ambassador in ''The Stillborn Lover,'' which opens next month at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. 
In Canadian playwright Timothy Findley's mystery about love and Cold War politics, Harry Raymond and his wife are hiding out in an Ottawa safe house, where they're being questioned about a dead male prostitute in Russia. Harry's career is endangered, atomic destruction threatens, and a secret is about to be revealed. 
''The thing about Harry Raymond is there is a secret that he's held all of his life,'' says Kate Maguire, executive director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. ''The play is about what are the consequences when we keep secrets that long? What happens when they are revealed?'' 
''It was incredibly moving to listen to the first reading of the play,'' Maguire adds. ''Richard was reading with Lois Nettleton, who plays his wife. And you realized the costs they have paid by holding this secret. Everyone was moved to tears. In great moments of theater you see the truth in front of you. It was shattering.'' 

Playing someone who keeps secrets has new meaning to Chamberlain. He has outed himself, after decades of pretending he was something he is not: heterosexual. 
After decades of eluding questions and fudging replies when interviewers inquired about his private life, Chamberlain now seems eager, in fact elated, at the prospect of talking. His answers are sometimes surprising -- especially for those who think that ''coming out'' is no problem nowadays. 

Just weeks ago, before the release of his new memoir, ''Shattered Love,'' Chamberlain worried about the book tour. ''I expected to be shunned, stoned, expected crosses burning on my lawn,'' he says only partly in jest. ''I expected people to hate me . . .'' Old fears die hard. 
Would his fans see him as a fraud and deceiver who'd feigned emotions he couldn't possibly have felt as he clutched the exquisite young Rachel Ward to his manly priest's chest? 
In fact, he had no intention of outing himself when he sent a five-page proposal to Judith Regan, of Regan books, who published the memoir. 
All five pages were about spirituality, he says. ''They described my belief system . . . a kind of philosophical treatise on how we might learn to live our lives more fully.'' Chamberlain says Regan told him it was all ''very interesting but needed to be a little more personal. Readers have to see how these ideas grew out of your life experiences.'' Did she know he was gay? ''Of course she did,'' he answers with a laugh. ''The whole industry knew. And I knew they knew. But I didn't think the general public knew about it.'' 

So there he was, at home in Hawaii with Martin, his partner of 26 years  and no great job offers coming in. ''The phone had stopped ringing. It was as if fate had given me the time and fortitude to do what I had never imagined doing.'' 
Writing the book turned out to be ''the biggest learning experience of my life,'' he says. ''I suddenly realized that being straight or gay is a total non event. If you tell me you're straight, what does that say about you? 
Nothing but the general category of people you choose to sleep with. Period. Nothing about whether you are good, bad, smart, dumb, entertaining, boring. . . . I suddenly realized that saying I'm gay is no big deal. Who cares?'' 
And how have his fans reacted to the news? ''Everyone has been so supportive, so positive, so friendly on this tour. In New York, people walked up to me in the street, and in theatres. Strangers gave me the thumbs-up, wished me well, said, `Good for you.' I am just awe-struck by the change in the way I feel about life now.'' 
Chamberlain says he'd hated himself all his life for being gay. ''I was as homophobic as the next guy.'' This duality caused him to become two people, he says. He was ''the good Richard,'' who is a handsome, straight leading man, and ''the bad Richard,'' who is gay and, therefore, beyond contempt. The good Richard got the roles, in Chamberlain's tortured perception. But it was hard to act them with authenticity, he says, because all his true emotions and feelings lay within the ''bad'' Richard, ''whom I didn't even want to know.'' 
His blue eyes are huge and brilliant now, his voice booming with audible awe, at the enormity of his realization. ''Sixty-eight years it took me to realize that I'd been wrong about myself. I wasn't terrible at all. And now, suddenly, I am free. . . . It's intoxicating.'' 
In this era of sexual openness, how could he have clung to the idea that he was rotten because he was gay? ''I grew up thinking there was nothing worse. In the '40s and '50s, it was worse to be a gay man than to be a traitor. Or a murderer.'' 
It was after he'd won the role that propelled him to fame in the early '60s, as ''Dr. Kildare,'' that he recalls the beginnings of the discomfort that pursued him all his life. If you're pretending to be someone you're not, you don't know how to access real feelings, he says. Of course, he's not a young leading man anymore, which perhaps made it easier for him to come out. 
Does he wish he'd come out sooner? 
''I am so happy that it happened at all. I can see where I started, and I can see what I've come to. The contrast is so great and my joy so enormous that I haven't got any regrets at all.'' 
''The Stillborn Lover'' runs July 8-26 at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass. For tickets, phone 413-298-5576, or visit www.berkshiretheatre.org.