Hollywood mourns loss of Larry Kramer, playwright and AIDS activist
On Wednesday, celebrities and fellow human rights activists mourned the loss of Larry Kramer, the playwright and influential gay activist who urged the United States government to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
According to Variety, Kramer died Wednesday from pneumonia, his husband David Webster told the New York Times.
Earlier in his life, Kramer was a screenwriter with credits including “Women in Love” and the 1973 musical “Lost Horizon.”
Spurred by the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, Kramer became a fierce activist and an impassioned writer, and one of the earliest and most vocal advocates for AIDS research, treatment access and institutional recognition of the gay community so hard-hit by the disease.
He is best known not only as one of the founders of both Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, but also as the writer of novels and plays including his 1985 work “The Normal Heart,” his urgent, agitprop depiction of the early days of the AIDS crisis.
Celebrities took to social media to express their grief at the news of Kramer's death and to honor him for his many achievements.
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Don’t know a soul who saw or read The Normal Heart and came away unmoved, unchanged. What an extraordinary writer, what a life.
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 27, 2020
Thank you, Larry Kramer. pic.twitter.com/M3hA0cNrCU
Later in life, Kramer rode a wave of recognition for his accomplishments. A 2011 Broadway revival of “The Normal Heart” won three Tonys, and Kramer picked up a 2013 special Tony for his contribution to humanitarian causes. Ryan Murphy’s movie adaptation of “Normal Heart,” which starred Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts, aired on HBO in 2014 and earned two Emmys.
Kramer was 84 years old.