Michael Kearns, a St. Louis native credited as one of Hollywood's first openly gay actors and remembered as a trailblazing AIDS activist and author, has died at age 76. He built a career spanning film, television and theater beginning in the 1970s while also becoming one of the most visible HIV-positive public figures in American entertainment.
Kearns was born Jan. 8, 1950, and raised in St. Louis, where according to the Los Angeles Times, he felt odd from an early age. He graduated from Normandy High School in 1968, as reported by St. Louis Public Radio, before heading off to study acting at the original Goodman School of Drama, which later became DePaul University's Theatre School. He graduated from that program in 1972, per the same Los Angeles Times account.
From The Waltons to a Pioneering Public Disclosure
Kearns landed his first television role on an episode of The Waltons in 1974, St. Louis Public Radio reports, launching a screen career that would eventually include Cheers, Knots Landing, Beverly Hills, 90210, And the Band Played On and The Kentucky Fried Movie, according to the outlet's reporting. He came out as gay in the mid-1970s, as noted by the Hollywood Reporter, at a time when doing so publicly in the entertainment industry was exceedingly rare.
The moment that cemented his place in television history came in 1991, when he disclosed that he was HIV-positive on NBC's A Closer Look and, the following day, on Entertainment Tonight, the Los Angeles Times account states. A year later, he appeared in a segment of ABC's dramedy Life Goes On, playing a character living with HIV. As an adult, Kearns also tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS and spoke publicly about his illness, choosing to turn a private diagnosis into an extended act of public advocacy.
Building a Movement Through Theater
Kearns didn't just perform about the AIDS crisis — he built institutions around it. In 1984, he and James Carroll Pickett founded Artists Confronting AIDS, according to the same Los Angeles Times archival report, and he went on to direct the 1986 world premiere of Robert Chesley's Jerker, per the Hollywood Reporter. That same Los Angeles Times archival piece describes him as a pioneer of AIDS theater, crediting him with staging some of the first widely seen works of AIDS theater in Los Angeles.
His activism extended well beyond the stage. Records from the Online Archive of California indicate he organized and produced numerous benefits and awareness-raising events, and he created the Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event, which has raised millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS services and charities throughout Southern California since 1984, according to the archive. He later founded the spoken-word collective QueerWise, though sources differ on the exact year — the Hollywood Reporter cites 2011, while the Los Angeles Times cites 2012.
A Return Home and a Lasting Legacy
Kearns didn't forget St. Louis. St. Louis Public Radio reports that he returned to the city in the 1990s to speak with students at Soldan International Studies High School about HIV and to perform excerpts from his work Intimacies, bringing his message of openness and survival back to the community where he grew up.
He also built a substantial body of written work. The Los Angeles Times reports he published five theater books, including T-Cells & Sympathy and Acting = Life, while the Online Archive of California states he authored seven books overall — an inconsistency that remains unresolved across the sourcing on his bibliography.
Kearns is survived by his adopted daughter, Katherine, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Decades after he first spoke publicly about his HIV status on national television, his combination of performance, advocacy and candor left a mark on both the entertainment industry and the broader fight against AIDS stigma that outlasted any single role he played.
