Michael Kearns, one of Hollywood's first out gay actors and an AIDS activist, dies at 76

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Set us as preferred Michael Kearns, a trailblazing AIDs activist and author credited as the first out gay actor, has died.He was 76.Filmmaker and professor Roland Palencia confirmed the actor’s death on social media, writing that Kearns had died Monday evening after feeling unwell and calling the paramedics on Sunday.

Palencia said that the actor had been in and out of emergency rooms more than five times in the last few months.“Michael Kearns was a friend, mentor, neighbor, and my movie buddy,” Palencia wrote.

“For the past year, we watched an average of a movie a month.Our favorite theater was the Vista Theater in Los Feliz, with a larger-than-life screen and within walking distance of where we both lived.

Our favorite film this year was ‘The History of Sound.’“It is a strange feeling to know we will not see the living Michael again, who spoke in hyperbolic, superlative tones.For him, nothing in life was small enough; everything had magnified significance.

He himself and his legacy are larger than life,” he continued.“I will miss him deeply.

Our next movie was going to be ‘La Bola Negra,’ a film based on Federico García Lorca’s first openly gay play, the Spanish playwright [was] killed in 1936 by the fascist Francisco Franco army.Michael was our Los Angeles García Lorca.”Born Jan.

8, 1950, and raised in St.Louis, Kearns felt different and odd from an early age.

“I couldn’t throw a ball particularly well.I didn’t excel in sports,” he told talk show host Sheila Kuehl during a 1998 appearance on “Get Used to It.”“But one day I was put in the school play, and I excelled.

Suddenly I realized I could entertain, and from that moment on it was just like this realization, oh my God, here is something that I can do, I have found it, and I was only 8 years old.From that moment on, to t...