Michael Kearns, one of Hollywood's first out gay actors and HIV-positive pioneers, dies at 76

Michael Kearns, who spent more than five decades refusing to let Hollywood's fear of openly gay actors define what he could do or who he could be, died on October 6, 2026, in Los Angeles. He was 76.

Filmmaker and professor Roland Palencia, who confirmed the death on social media, said Kearns had felt unwell and called paramedics on Sunday before dying Monday evening. Palencia noted that Kearns had been in and out of emergency rooms more than five times in the preceding months. No cause of death has been publicly disclosed.

Michael Kearns was a friend, mentor, neighbor, and my movie buddy. It is a strange feeling to know we will not see the living Michael again, who spoke in hyperbolic, superlative tones. For him, nothing in life was small enough; everything had magnified significance. He himself and his legacy are larger than life.— Roland Palencia, filmmaker and professor

Kearns occupied a rare position in American entertainment: he was openly gay during an era when that alone could end a career, and in 1991 he went further, announcing on NBC's 'A Closer Look' — and the following day on 'Entertainment Tonight' — that he was HIV-positive, making him one of the first actors in Hollywood to do so publicly. The next year he appeared on ABC's dramedy 'Life Goes On,' playing a character with HIV.

Born January 8, 1950, in St. Louis, Missouri, Kearns found his calling at age eight when he was cast in a school play. He trained at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago — later the Theatre School at DePaul University — graduating in 1972 and moving to Los Angeles. Even there, among teachers he described as mostly gay or lesbian, he encountered the industry's central contradiction.

In spite of the fact that most of the teachers were gay or lesbian, they had that Hollywood philosophy that if they knew you to be a homosexual, you were not as eligible to play heterosexuals. By that point I was out, out, out. I mean, there was no way I was going to alter my offstage behavior to please anyone.— Michael Kearns

He made his Los Angeles theatrical debut in Tom Eyen's 'The Dirtiest Show in Town' at the Ivar Theatre in 1972, and built a mainstream film and television career that included roles in 'Body Double,' 'Beverly Hills, 90210,' and 'Cheers,' alongside a prolific life in theater. His most celebrated stage performance, according to multiple accounts, was the title role in Charles Ludlam's 'Camille' at Highways Performance Space in 1993, which earned him a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award nomination.

But it was his AIDS-era solo theater work that Kearns himself described as transformative. His pieces 'Intimacies' and 'More Intimacies,' in which he portrayed a dozen culturally diverse people living with HIV/AIDS, toured cities across the United States, Australia, and England. The work grew directly from personal grief.

Somewhere in that time, I became an artist. Whatever that pain, that loss, that tragedy was, I managed to spin it like an alchemist into something passionate. And it's been increasingly so since.— Michael Kearns

In 1984, Kearns co-founded Artists Confronting AIDS with playwright James Carroll Pickett, serving as its artistic director for a decade. He directed the organization's landmark productions 'AIDS/US' in 1986, 'AIDS/US II' in 1990, and 'AIDS/US/TEENS' in 1994. He also co-founded the S.T.A.G.E. (Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event) benefit and served as a commissioner of PFLAG.

As a writer, Kearns contributed to the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, Frontiers, and other publications, and authored five theater books. Two of them — 'T-Cells & Sympathy' and 'Acting = Life' — were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards.

His personal life carried its own weight. In 1992, he married his husband, Philip Juwig, who died that same year. After three years of grief, Kearns said he kept returning to one answer: he wanted to be a father. In 1995 he began adoption proceedings, and in 1997 he adopted a daughter, Tia Katherine Kearns, whom he named after his grandmother. She was born in 1994. In a 2017 interview in Honeysuckle Magazine, she described her upbringing at a progressive school where her father's talents were celebrated, and said her own political consciousness had been shaped early — a direct inheritance from her father.

News of his death drew tributes across LGBTQ+ and entertainment media.

Michael was our Los Angeles García Lorca.— Roland Palencia, filmmaker and professor

Why it matters — Kearns's willingness to be publicly gay and then publicly HIV-positive in Hollywood — at a time when both carried serious professional and social consequences — helped shift what was visible and possible for LGBTQ+ people in American entertainment and public life.

Reported by hollywoodreporter.com, ew.com, en.wikipedia.org, arcamax.com, people.com