Beverly Hills, 90210 actor Michael Kearns has died at 76 after a final hospital text to a friend, no cause of death has been made public.
Hello Magazine reported that the St. Louis native and longtime Los Angeles performer passed away Monday, October 5, at 8:45 p.m.
He was 76. He is survived by his adopted daughter, Katherine, with whom he remained close.
Kearns was known to television audiences for playing Hal in several 1996 episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210. Friends and fellow artists remembered him as an early openly gay Hollywood actor, a stage director, and an AIDS activist who refused to stay quiet about his diagnosis.
The same week he died, he had been scheduled to appear at Los Angeles’s Celebration Theater for a tribute to LGBTQ theater history. That appearance never came.
The night before he died, just after 6:30 p.m., Kearns texted filmmaker and friend Roland Palencia from the hospital.
"Thank you a million times. They are doing lots of tests. Will likely be here all night."
Palencia later shared that some of Kearns’s final spoken words still stuck with him. Kearns had been in and out of emergency rooms more than five times in a three-month stretch.
"Michael Kearns was a friend, mentor, neighbor, and my movie buddy...Some of his last words continue to reverberate in my mind: 'I don't know if I want to do this anymore,' as he had been in and out of emergency rooms over five times within a three-month period."
No official cause of death has been released. The hospital was not named.
Celebrity farewells have piled up of late, from the loss of Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint at 102 to other familiar screen names leaving the stage in quick succession.
Performance artist Tim Miller, a friend since 1984, confirmed the death on Facebook and paid plain tribute.
"I am mourning my beloved Michael Kearns. AIDS performer-warrior. Big brother. Friend since 1984. Truly one of a kind. The world is a smaller place... I love you, Michael."
Miller’s note framed Kearns as both artist and advocate, a man who treated the AIDS crisis as something to confront in public, not hide in private.
Other recent goodbyes in entertainment have hit just as hard for fans, including the death of “Saved by the Bell” star Dennis Haskins at 75.
Kearns studied acting at Chicago’s Goodman School of Drama, then built his career in Los Angeles. Beyond Beverly Hills, 90210, he worked in film and television, directed theater, founded artist collectives, and wrote two books.
In 1986 he directed Robert Chesley’s play Jerker. A partial broadcast of the work on Los Angeles station KPFK-FM triggered national outrage and a warning from the Federal Communications Commission. Years later, Kearns told the Los Angeles Times the fight was never only about one show.
"If this had been a man and a woman having this conversation... the issues would not have been the same. A lot of people, myself included, look on that as just the beginnings of what continues to rage on, which is censorship of queer work."
He founded Artists Confronting AIDS and QueerWise. In 1991 he went public with his HIV diagnosis and explained why silence was not an option.
"I'm doing this for all people with HIV. HIV is nothing to be ashamed of. For me to remain silent indicates shame or fear on some level. I felt that not one more HIV-infected actor or anyone else should die in shame... I couldn't remain silent."
Those words, first carried by the Bay Area Reporter, defined the public stance he kept for decades: name the illness, reject the stigma, keep working.
Sudden goodbyes in the public eye keep coming, whether a young life cut short like Presley Gerber’s death at 27 or long careers ending in old age.
In 1992 Kearns married Philip Juwig. Juwig died the same year. In 1995 Kearns adopted his daughter, Katherine, and stayed close to her for the rest of his life.
A 2010 photo captured him at The Coast Playhouse in Los Angeles before a reading of women’s writing, still working the boards well into later decades.
Illness and mortality have marked other public stories this season as well, including Jeopardy champion Dr. Courtney Shah’s death at 52 after brain cancer.
What the record shows is straightforward. Kearns put his name on a then-dangerous diagnosis, directed contested work, took network television roles, raised a daughter, and kept showing up for the stage until the final week of his life.
The cause of his death remains undisclosed. The timeline of those last hospital visits does not.
A man who spent thirty-plus years telling others not to die in shame left the world after one more night of tests, proof that candor and grit still outlast the spin that tries to manage every public goodbye.