Michael Kearns, the actor, writer, director and activist who became one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood and, in 1991, the industry's first openly HIV-positive star, has died at 76, according to St. Louis Public Radio. He died Oct. 5 at his home in Los Angeles; a filmmaker confirmed the death on social media, noting Kearns had been in and out of emergency rooms in recent months.

Born Jan. 8, 1950, in St. Louis, Kearns built a decades-long career on television and in film, with credits including Cheers, Knots Landing, Beverly Hills, 90210, And the Band Played On and Kentucky Fried Movie. But it was a single television appearance that defined his legacy far beyond any role.

A Disclosure That Changed Hollywood

In 1991, shortly after the AIDS death of actor Brad Davis, Kearns went on Entertainment Tonight and announced he was HIV-positive — becoming, by most accounts, the first openly HIV-positive actor working in Hollywood to say so publicly. At a time when an HIV diagnosis could end a career overnight, the disclosure was both a personal risk and a deliberate act of activism.

HE MADE HIMSELF A TARGET SO OTHERS WOULDN'T HAVE TO HIDE.

Kearns channeled that activism into his writing as much as his acting. He wrote and performed solo theater pieces chronicling the AIDS epidemic from the inside, and he directed Robert Chesley's play Jerker — a work candid enough about gay intimacy and the epidemic that it drew the attention of federal censors at the FCC when a radio reading of it aired. He is survived by his adopted daughter, Katherine, according to reporting that cites friends and collaborators.

Tributes from the theater and LGBTQ advocacy communities have focused less on his screen credits than on the decades he spent afterward: performing, teaching and writing about living — not just dying — with HIV, at a moment when very few public figures were willing to say the word out loud.

No public memorial details had been announced as of Friday.