Richard Chamberlain, TV actor who starred in 'Dr. Kildare,' dies at 90
LOS ANGELES — Richard Chamberlain, the handsome hero of the 1960s television series 'Dr. Kildare' who found a second career as an award-winning 'king of the miniseries,' has died. He was 90.
Chamberlain died Saturday night in Waimanalo, Hawaii, of complications following a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.
'Our beloved Richard is with the angels now. He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us,' Martin Rabbett, his lifelong partner, said in a statement. 'How blessed were we to have known such an amazing and loving soul. Love never dies. And our love is under his wings lifting him to his next great adventure.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Shaq calls BS on Wilt Chamberlain's 20,000 women urban legend
The post Shaq calls BS on Wilt Chamberlain's 20,000 women urban legend appeared first on ClutchPoints. Shaquille O'Neal has never been one to mince words, and he wasn't about to start when the topic turned to Wilt Chamberlain's infamous claim. On a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Brandon Jennings and Adam Lefkoe, the Lakers legend flat-out dismissed Chamberlain's decades-old statement that he slept with 20,000 women, per Yahoo. His reaction? Pure disbelief laced with the kind of unfiltered commentary only Shaq can deliver. 'First of all, he didn't have no cell phone,' O'Neal pointed out, questioning the logistics of Chamberlain allegedly meeting and sleeping with nearly 20 women a day. 'You show up? You just pop up and there's 20 women waiting?' Shaq wasn't done. He broke it down, doing the kind of street-level math that brings this number into full-blown fantasy territory. 'A thousand women a year for 20 years? Get the f*** outta here,' he said. 'Who even knows 20,000 people?' While Shaq's delivery was laced with humor and disbelief, there was a real point behind the performance. His skepticism wasn't about hating on Chamberlain's legacy, it was about calling out what he sees as an exaggerated myth that's persisted in sports folklore for too long. Ironically, Chamberlain may have softened on the claim later in life. In his autobiography Wilt: Larger Than Life, the late Hall of Famer framed the number less as a verified count and more of a symbol. He admitted the 20,000 figure was chosen to illustrate how central sex was to his life—equally important, in his view, as basketball. 'We're all fascinated by numbers,' he said, referencing his historic 100-point game. 'So I thought of a number that was a round number… and I used that number.' But later in life, Chamberlain walked some of that bravado back. He acknowledged that while the playboy lifestyle got attention, it paled in comparison to the joy of a meaningful relationship. It was a sentiment that echoed the growth of a man once defined by records and excess, now leaning into reflection. Shaq's commentary might have come with jokes and expletives, but the underlying sentiment was serious. Legends grow, stories stretch, and sometimes, the best way to honor greatness is to separate the myth from the man. Related: Joey Chestnut working on returning to competition after ban Related: Shaq, Brandon Jennings reveal truth about women in lobbies NBA myth
Elle
7 days ago
- Elle
The Stylist Behind Young Hollywood's Coolest Looks
'Even when I think my schedule is chill, it usually isn't,' stylist Jared Ellner says from his home base of Los Angeles, where he's just returned after a stint in Europe. For the past few weeks, he's been juggling a slate of overlapping international projects, including the wardrobe for A new class of young creatives is driving entertainment forward: YouTube wunderkind-turned-entrepreneur Guel Sener/Thom Browne Molly Gordon in Thom Browne. A self-proclaimed fashion nerd who grew up in suburban New Jersey, Ellner fed his obsession by taking sewing lessons and studying both fashion and art history. He enrolled at Parsons for fashion design, where he built his stamina for sleepless working nights. After college, he took an assistant gig at the now-defunct Garage magazine. The first shoot he styled solo featured Chamberlain; about a year later, her publicist called to ask if he'd consider working with her full-time. Ellner has a track record of taking a client from fashion newbie to front-row fixture. A prime example is Chamberlain, who signed on as a Louis Vuitton ambassador—a first for a YouTube-native talent—in 2019. The two worked together on a handful of projects before her first Met Gala in 2021. 'Things got much more serious after that,' he recalls. (They are so close that Chamberlain modeled Ellner's self-titled fashion line when it launched this past fall.) Dimitrios Kambouris // Getty Images Sabrina Carpenter in vintage Bob Mackie. Sennott was his second client, a connection made by their mutual friend (and her Shiva Baby co-star) Gordon. He styled Sennott for the movie's premiere—her first time working with a stylist. 'We were so green, and now she's a Balenciaga [campaign star],' he says. Ellner's encyclopedic fashion knowledge informs his work, and he's unafraid to drop an archival reference—a styling tactic that has sparked heated discourse among fans online. 'I think people are rightfully fatigued by it, so it's a balance of figuring out when it feels authentic, impactful, and useful, and when it feels like a crutch,' he explains. His favorite nod to the past thus far? Guts , and a year later, Carpenter wore a look from his fall 1994 show for New Year's Eve. Courtesy of Jared Ellner Stylist Jared Ellner. Styling is intimate and requires intense vulnerability, so when it comes to Ellner's clients, the lines often blur between the personal and professional. 'I am so comfortable and productive with Jared, because the foundation of our relationship is friendship rather than business,' Chamberlain says of their partnership. 'We are not afraid to disagree and voice our opinions, because we trust the bond we have, which allows us to truly collaborate.' Gordon echoes this sentiment, saying, 'Jared is so giving, warm, and kind, but he has a cutting honesty that I trust 100 percent.' 'The sweetest part of the job is that all of these people feel comfortable allowing me into such personal parts of their physicality, their image, and their communication of themselves to the world,' Ellner says. With his long-term clients, he enjoys helping to curate an overall image that goes beyond just a year or two of looks. 'The balance of styling is keeping everybody in their zone while also allowing the freedom to experiment and be a different person for a day, without feeling inconsistent with their personal brand,' he explains. A recent moody turn he's proud of is Chamberlain's Oscar after-party look, which might just be his favorite: a Gareth Cattermole // Getty Images Another important through line for Ellner's clients? While they're all serious talents, they don't take themselves too seriously. 'There are a lot of people who would not be comfortable taking a risk or doing anything even slightly off-kilter for a major moment,' he says. 'But all my girls—they're fearless.' A version of this story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE. Related Stories
American Military News
12-05-2025
- American Military News
Richard Chamberlain, who soared to fame as Dr. Kildare on TV and gained acclaim in ‘Shogun,' dies
Richard Chamberlain, who soared to fame as the handsome young Dr. Kildare on television in the early 1960s and two decades later reignited his TV stardom as a seasoned leading man in the highly rated miniseries 'Shogun' and 'The Thorn Birds,' has died. He was 90. A Los Angeles native, Chamberlain died Saturday night in Waimanalo, Hawaii, of complications from a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll. 'Our beloved Richard is with the angels now. He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us,' Martin Rabbett, his lifelong partner, said in a statement reported by Associated Press. 'How blessed were we to have known such an amazing and loving soul. Love never dies. And our love is under his wings lifting him to his next great adventure.' American actor Richard Chamberlain points while standing behind actor Yoko Shimada, as actor Toshiro Mifune (1920 – 1997) looks on, from the TV miniseries 'Shogun,' in 1980. (/TNS) In a six-decade career that spanned television, movies and theater, Chamberlain played a wide variety of roles — including Hamlet and Professor Henry Higgins on stage and a swashbuckling French musketeer and a frontier America trapper on screen. 'I need to do theater. If I don't, I feel something is missing,' Chamberlain told The Times in 1984. 'But I love doing television and movies too. And I think I've shown that an actor can do all three. 'As I've said before, the fun in acting is playing different roles. If you're just going to play one role all your life, you might as well be selling insurance.' Chamberlain was a virtual unknown with a limited number of TV guest shots and a low-budget movie to his credit when he was cast by MGM as Dr. Kildare in the hour-long medical drama. As Dr. James Kildare, an idealistic young intern at Blair General Hospital, Chamberlain starred opposite Raymond Massey as his wise medical mentor, Dr. Leonard Gillespie. 'The series may be among the solid hits of the season,' predicted Cecil Smith, The Times' late TV columnist, shortly after 'Dr. Kildare' made its debut in 1961. 'Chamberlain is an agreeable, attractive young actor with great warmth; he's an ideal foil for the expert Massey, one of the finest actors of our time.' Overnight, the tall, blond, blue-eyed, 27-year-old former college sprinter, who later admitted to being 'as green as grass' as an actor, became a teen idol and a fan-magazine favorite who was soon generating up to 12,000 fan letters a week. 'Dr. Kildare,' which premiered on NBC the same season as another popular medical drama on ABC, 'Ben Casey,' starring Vince Edwards, ran for five years. During his time off from the series, Chamberlain starred in two movies: as a trial lawyer in the 1963 courtroom drama 'Twilight of Honor,' and opposite Yvette Mimieux in the 1965 dramatic love story 'Joy in the Morning.' But his role as the noble TV doctor remained his greatest claim to fame at the time, his popularity generating comic books, trading cards, a board game, a doll and other merchandise bearing his white-coated 'Kildare' likeness. Chamberlain's weekly TV exposure also led to a brief side career as a recording artist, one that revealed a pleasing baritone on releases that included the album 'Richard Chamberlain Sings.' 'Kildare had been an incredible break for me, and a grand, if grueling, rocket ride,' the actor recalled in his 2003 memoir, 'Shattered Love.' 'Though I was considered more a heartthrob than a serious actor, it had put me on the map.' That point was driven home during a luncheon gathering at Massey's home when veteran English actor Cedric Hardwicke told him, 'You know, Richard, you've become a star before you've had a chance to learn to act.' After his five-season run on 'Dr. Kildare,' Chamberlain turned down a number of new TV-series offers, preferring instead to concentrate on theater and film. His first attempt on Broadway — in a troubled 1966 production of a musical version of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' with Mary Tyler Moore — ended when producer David Merrick pulled the plug on the much-anticipated musical's opening after only four preview performances in New York. Chamberlain went on to appear in what he called his first serious film, playing Julie Christie's occasionally violent husband in 'Petulia,' a 1968 drama directed by Richard Lester. Determined to obtain 'some solid acting training,' he moved to England, where he immediately was cast in a 1968 six-hour BBC production of Henry James' novel 'The Portrait of a Lady.' Instead of joining an acting academy in London, as he had planned, Chamberlain received what he referred to as on-the-job training during his more than four years living in England. Indeed, 'The Portrait of a Lady' led to a challenging, most unlikely role for TV's Dr. Kildare: Hamlet. His performance in the BBC production of the James novel had drawn the attention of the well-known Birmingham Repertory Company, which was looking for a known actor who could fill seats for its upcoming production of the Shakespeare tragedy. After undergoing long and intensive rehearsals, Chamberlain said he was amazed when most of the London critics gave him 'quite good' reviews. He later went on to play Hamlet in a different production for Hallmark Television. 'Having graduated from pretty boy to actor, I was at last taken seriously, and it was an exhilarating experience,' he wrote. Chamberlain appeared in director Bryan Forbes' 1969 film 'The 'Madwoman of Chaillot,' starring Katharine Hepburn, and he starred as the Russian composer Tchaikovsky opposite Glenda Jackson in director Ken Russell's 1970 film 'The Music Lovers.' Among his other film credits in the '70s were 'The Three Musketeers' (1973), 'The Towering Inferno' (1974) and 'The Last Wave' (1977). Chamberlain's early work on the American stage included starring in the Seattle Repertory Theater's 1971 production of Shakespeare's 'Richard II,' a performance deemed by Times theater critic Dan Sullivan as 'an astonishingly accomplished one.' And his 1973 starring role in 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles earned him a Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle Award. Over the years, Chamberlain starred on Broadway four times, all in revivals: as the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in 'The Night of the Iguana' (1976-77), as Charles in 'Blithe Spirit' (1987), as Professor Henry Higgins in 'My Fair Lady' (1993-94) and as Captain Georg von Trapp in 'The Sound of Music' (1999). On television, his leading role in the 1975 TV movie 'The Count of Monte Cristo' earned him the first of his four Emmy nominations. But it was a string of TV miniseries that would give him his biggest post-'Dr. Kildare' career highs, beginning with his role as Alexander McKeag, a bearded Scottish trapper, in 'Centennial,' a star-studded 12-episode historical epic that aired on NBC in 1978-79. Then, in 1980, came his starring role in 'Shogun,' an NBC miniseries set in feudal Japan in the year 1600. As John Blackthorne, a shipwrecked English navigator who is taken prisoner, he becomes involved in a battle among warlords seeking to become Japan's supreme military ruler and falls in love with his married interpreter. Chamberlain was unprepared for the response to his role in the critically acclaimed, highly rated miniseries. 'I'd forgotten about being besieged in supermarkets,' he told The Times in 1981. 'I used to get it during my 'Dr. Kildare' days, but then it stopped and I forgot about it. Now it's started all over again.' In the 1983 ABC miniseries 'The Thorn Birds,' he played Father Ralph, an ambitious Catholic priest who struggles with his vows after falling in love with the beautiful young niece (played by Rachel Ward) of the wealthy matriarch of a sprawling Australian sheep ranch (Barbara Stanwyck). Dubbed the 'king of the miniseries,' Chamberlain won Golden Globes and received Emmy nominations for his performances in both 'Shogun' and 'The Thorn Birds.' He went on to earn another Emmy nomination as the star of the two-part 'Wallenberg: A Hero's Story' on NBC in 1985, in which he played a Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Born George Richard Chamberlain in Los Angeles on March 31, 1934, Chamberlain was named after his grandfather but was always called Dick or Richard. He and his older brother Bill grew up in Beverly Hills, in a three-bedroom house in what Chamberlain called 'the wrong side of Wilshire Boulevard.' His mother was a housewife. His father, a salesman for a small company that manufactured grocery-store fixtures, was an alcoholic whose periodic drinking binges devastated the family. When Chamberlain was about 9, his father joined Alcoholics Anonymous. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School, where he was a four-year letterman in track, Chamberlain majored in art at Pomona College in Claremont. Despite being shy and inhibited, he began 'moonlighting' in the drama department, where, he later wrote, he found himself 'fast losing my heart to drama.' Drafted into the Army after graduation, Chamberlain spent 16 months as an infantry company clerk in South Korea. Intent on becoming an actor after his two-year stint in the Army, he returned to Los Angeles, where he was accepted into an acting workshop taught by blacklisted actor Jeff Corey and landed an agent. Chamberlain quickly began doing guest roles on TV series such as 'Gunsmoke,' 'Bourbon Street Beat' and 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.' Throughout most of his long career, Chamberlain took great pains to keep a secret from the public: He was gay. Although his friends and people in show business knew, Chamberlain said he avoided talking about his private life in interviews, fearful of what it would do to a career built on his being a romantic lead opposite a woman. But that changed with the publication of his candid memoir in 2003, a time in his life when, as he told the New York Times, he no longer had 'an image to defend.' By then, he had been in a more than two-decade-long relationship with Rabbett, an actor, producer and director. The two lived together in Hawaii until Chamberlain returned to Los Angeles in 2010 to resume his acting career. Chamberlain had always hated himself for being gay, he told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. 'I was as homophobic as the next guy,' he said. 'I grew up thinking there was nothing worse. 'Sixty-eight years it took me to realize that I'd been wrong about myself. I wasn't horrible at all. And now, suddenly, I'm free. Out of the prison I built for myself. It's intoxicating. I can talk about it positively because I'm not afraid anymore.' Despite his concern over how the public would react, he found acceptance and warmth instead. 'Everyone has been so supportive, so positive,' he said. 'In New York, people walked up to me in the street, and in theaters. Strangers gave me the thumbs up, wished me well, said, 'Good for you.' I'm just awestruck by the change in the way I feel about life now.' ___ © 2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
