Michael Kearns made a deeply personal announcement on television in 1991: he was living with HIV. At a time of devastating stigma, the openly gay actor wanted other people to know that their diagnosis was nothing to be ashamed of.
Kearns died October 5, aged 76. Journalist and longtime friend Karen Ocamb reported his death in the Los Angeles Blade, with Entertainment Weekly publishing a new obituary October 9.
His career crossed television, film and theater. Audiences saw him in shows including Cheers and Beverly Hills, 90210, and in the television film And the Band Played On, which explored the early AIDS epidemic.
In 1992, after making his own HIV status public, he appeared in Life Goes On as a character living with the virus.
That visibility mattered in an industry where gay performers had often been encouraged to remain private, and where HIV carried another burden of fear and discrimination.
Kearns also worked to make room for stories outside mainstream entertainment. He co-founded Artists Confronting AIDS and directed Robert Chesley’s Jerker, bringing gay men’s experiences of intimacy and the AIDS crisis to the stage.
For readers who lived through those years, his story recalls how much courage it could take simply to speak publicly. Visibility came from individuals willing to put their own lives into the conversation.
His personal life held love, loss and fatherhood.
Ocamb remembers attending his wedding with Philip Juwig, who died in 1992. Later, Kearns became an adoptive father to Tia Katherine, now known as Katherine.
She was part of a life much larger than a diagnosis or an acting résumé: family, friendship, creativity and the everyday work of raising a child.
Remembering Kearns means remembering all of those parts together. His advocacy was connected to the lives he wanted people to recognize—their relationships, their humor, their ambitions and their capacity to care for one another.
He leaves behind decades of work that helped gay people and people living with HIV see themselves represented, and helped audiences see the human beings behind the stigma.
Our thoughts are with Katherine and everyone who loved him.
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