Monday, Dec. 22, 1986

People

By Guy D. Garcia

Plenty of women no doubt think that he has the perfect looks for the role, but Richard Chamberlain finds the idea of playing the world's greatest lover something of an anachronism. "They just don't grow characters like Casanova anymore," he observes. "His kind of life would never happen now, but he is a great deal of fun." No kidding. The script for Casanova, a three-hour abc movie to appear later this season, calls for Chamberlain to seduce such beauties as Faye Dunaway and Sylvia Kristel (Emmannuelle). Nice work if you can cut it, but Casanova may have had an easier time of it. Chamberlain, 51, has to bed all his conquests twice. "We have the classic American and European dichotomy," he reports. "For the American version the women are covered up, and then when we switch to the European version, blouses come ripping off and there is considerably more flesh." Poor Richard.