Michael Kearns, credited as one of Hollywood’s first out gay actors, has died at 76. Roland Palencia confirmed the death on social media and said Kearns died Monday evening after feeling unwell on Sunday and calling paramedics.
For people searching Michael Kearns 90210, the news lands as the loss of a performer whose career stretched from the 1970s through the aughts. Kearns, born Jan. 8, 1950, was raised in St. Louis, studied acting at the original Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and graduated from the Theatre School at DePaul University in 1972.
Palencia said Kearns had been in and out of emergency rooms more than five times in the last few months, a detail that gives his final days a harsher edge than a simple obituary. Kearns’s body of work included roles in Body Double, Nine Lives, Street Asylum and Beverly Hills, 90210, but his larger place in entertainment history came in 1991, when he shared on NBC’s A Close that he was HIV positive.
That disclosure made him a visible figure in an era when such openness could still end a career, and it fit the life he described as a path he found early and never left. Kearns once said he was not much good at sports, but a school play changed everything and led him to acting; later, he said that as his 20s brought new awareness of his sexuality, theater became a way to connect with who he really was. Palencia called him a friend, mentor, neighbor and movie buddy. What remains unanswered is why the emergency-room visits became so frequent before his death Monday evening.
