Journalist Karen Ocamb, who described herself as a friend, announced the death of actor and AIDS activist Michael Kearns in the Los Angeles Blade. Kearns died Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, at 76.
No cause of death has been released. Several of Kearns’ friends confirmed his death. He was known for portraying Hal in several 1996 episodes of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” and he has been described as one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood. Film, television, theater and literature all carried his work, which he drew largely from the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community; friends and colleagues across that community are in mourning after news of his death.
“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.
Friends Describe Final Days
Filmmaker Roland Palencia, a friend and neighbor, said in a social media tribute that Kearns died at 8:45 p.m. on Oct. 5. Emergency rooms had taken Kearns in and out more than five times across a three-month period, Palencia said. A text arrived from Kearns just after 6:30 p.m. the night before he died, Palencia said, sent from the hospital and reporting that doctors were running tests and that he expected to be there all night.
Performance artist Tim Miller, who had known Kearns since 1984, posted a tribute on Facebook. “I am mourning my beloved Michael Kearns,” Miller wrote, calling him one of a kind.
The event Kearns had been due to attend is identified as the Circa: Queer Histories Festival, scheduled for Oct. 11. The theater where he was due to appear posted a tribute on its Facebook page: “We share the community’s sorrow in this loss and celebrate the incredible impact he has had on our mission and the HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ Rights movements. Thank you, Michael, for all you gave this world.”
From St. Louis to Broadway
Kearns was born Jan. 8, 1950, in St. Louis. He studied acting at Chicago’s Goodman School of Drama, graduating in 1972, before moving to Los Angeles. He made his Broadway debut two years later in the comedy “Tubstrip,” set in a steam bath.
Tom Eyen, the book writer of “Dreamgirls,” discovered him. Eyen’s camp-theater extravaganzas and series television work filled Kearns’ 1970s and ’80s, and his screen credits included “Murder, She Wrote,” “Knots Landing,” “Days of Our Lives,” “Body Double,” “The Fall Guy” and “The Waltons.” Other credits included “Cheers,” the Emmy-winning TV film “And the Band Played On,” and an HIV-positive character on “Life Goes On.”
A Public Voice on HIV
Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985, and reporters turned to Kearns, then Hollywood’s only openly gay actor and the media’s go-to person for sound bites. Six years later, “Midnight Express” star Brad Davis died of AIDS in 1991, and the industry again made Kearns its go-to voice — this time as the only openly gay and HIV-positive actor willing to talk.
He disclosed his own HIV diagnosis publicly in 1991. That decision, observers say, helped destigmatize HIV and AIDS at a moment when few public figures spoke openly about either. “HIV is nothing to be ashamed of,” Kearns told the Bay Area Reporter in 1991, adding that staying quiet would, for him, signal shame or fear.
Theater, Activism and Family
In 1986 Kearns directed playwright Robert Chesley’s “Jerker,” whose story follows two gay men falling in love. The Los Angeles radio station KPFK-FM broadcast portions of the play, and the airing drew national outrage 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.
He 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.” He and Pickett cofounded the Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event (STAGE) in 1984; the benefit grew into the country’s oldest continual AIDS benefit. He founded the collectives Artists Confronting AIDS and QueerWise and wrote several books. In 2007 he received the L.A. Weekly Queen of the Angels theater award.
His home was an apartment in Los Feliz, where crucifixes he custom-made bore the images of rebels and gay icons. Skid Row drew him as a teacher of Express Yourself workshops, and he 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.
Kearns married Philip Juwig in 1992, and Juwig died later that same year. His daughter, Katherine, survives him; he took her in as a single parent in 1995, later adopted her and stayed close to her throughout his life.
