Hal, a character Michael Kearns portrayed in several 1996 episodes of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” was only one credit for an actor and AIDS activist who also stood as one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood. Kearns died Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, at 76. No cause of death has been released.
Journalist Karen Ocamb, a friend, announced his death in the Los Angeles Blade. Kearns died at 8:45 p.m.
“Today, a stunned gay theater and AIDS activism world is mourning the loss of the ubiquitous and creative artist who helped so many, literally touched so many, and probably died not knowing how beloved he really was,” Ocamb wrote in the Los Angeles Blade.
Across film, television, theater and literature, Kearns built a body of work that leaned heavily on what the LGBTQ+ community endured. Friends and colleagues throughout that community mourned when word of his death spread. He is survived by his daughter, Katherine, whom he took in as a single parent in 1995 and later adopted. The two stayed close throughout his life. His partner, Philip Juwig, died in 1992.
Friends Confirm the News
His death drew confirmation from several of Kearns’ friends. Performance artist Tim Miller, who had known him since 1984, put a tribute up on Facebook and called him one of a kind. “I am mourning my beloved Michael Kearns,” Miller wrote.
Kearns had been in and out of emergency rooms more than five times over a three-month period, according to a social media tribute from filmmaker Roland Palencia, a friend and neighbor.
Palencia said on Facebook that on Sunday, Oct. 4 — the day before Kearns died — Kearns was not feeling well and called paramedics, then texted Palencia from the hospital just after 6:30 p.m. that evening.
A Final Scheduled Appearance
Kearns had been due back with the Celebration Theater on Sunday, Oct. 11, six days after his death, to perform selections from “Jerker” with longtime friend Joe Gill at “Art in the Revolution: Queer Theater in 1982 and Today,” part of the Circa: Queer Histories Festival. The event has since been canceled, according to its ticket listing.
From St. Louis to Hollywood
Kearns was born in St. Louis on Jan. 8, 1950. He studied acting at Chicago’s Goodman School of Drama, graduating in 1972, before moving to Los Angeles. Tom Eyen, the book writer of “Dreamgirls,” discovered him, and Eyen’s camp-theater extravaganzas kept Kearns busy through the 1970s and ’80s, alongside roles on series television.
Those screen credits ran to “Murder, She Wrote,” “Knots Landing,” “Days of Our Lives,” “Body Double,” “The Fall Guy” and “The Waltons.” Reports also credit him with a Broadway debut in “Tubstrip” in 1974, an appearance on “Cheers,” an HIV-positive character on “Life Goes On” in 1992 and a role in HBO’s “And the Band Played On,” in which one report says he played AIDS activist Cleve Jones.
A Public Voice on AIDS
Reporters chasing sound bites after actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985 turned to Kearns, then Hollywood’s only openly gay actor. Six years later, the death of “Midnight Express” star Brad Davis from AIDS in 1991 sent the industry back to him — this time as the only openly gay and HIV-positive actor willing to talk.
Observers credit Kearns’ decision to go public with his HIV diagnosis in 1991 with helping to destigmatize HIV and AIDS at a time when few public figures would speak openly about either. He first confirmed he was HIV-positive in a 1991 interview with NBC’s “A Closer Look.” “HIV is nothing to be ashamed of,” he told the Bay Area Reporter that year. Silence, he added, would for him signal shame or fear.
In 1986, he directed playwright Robert Chesley’s “Jerker,” a work about two gay men falling in love. After the Los Angeles radio station KPFK-FM broadcast portions of the play, national outrage followed, along with a warning from the Federal Communications Commission. Kearns later told the Los Angeles Times that a censorship of queer work began with that episode and, in his view, had never stopped.
Kearns starred in playwright James Carroll Pickett’s “Dream Man” and “Bathhouse Benediction,” performed his own solo works “Intimacies” and “Rock,” and produced and directed AIDS-related ensemble pieces such as “AIDS/US” and “Jerker.” The Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event (STAGE), which he and Pickett cofounded in 1984, went on to become the country’s oldest continual AIDS benefit. He founded the collectives Artists Confronting AIDS and QueerWise, wrote several books and in 2007 received the L.A. Weekly Queen of the Angels theater award.
He lived in Los Feliz, in an apartment appointed with crucifixes he custom-made bearing the images of rebels and gay icons. He taught Express Yourself workshops on Skid Row, volunteered at the Downtown Women’s Center and the Lamp Community, led acting classes in Silver Lake and worked with the archival One Institute to make the work of gay and lesbian writers and performers available on YouTube and other websites.
