The Oscar nominee as well as avid advocate of HIV/AIDS and gay rights, Larry Kramer, has passed away at the age of 84 in New York after suffering from a bout of pneumonia.
- May 28, 2020
AceShowbiz - Award-winning playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer has died at the age of 84.
The Connecticut-born writer passed away in New York on Wednesday morning, May 27, 2020 after a bout of pneumonia, his husband David Webster confirmed to The New York Times.
Kramer began his career as a screenwriter, scoring an Oscar nomination in 1970 for adapting D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love", but it was his writing of the gay experience at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s which really won him acclaim, most notably for his autobiographical 1985 play "The Normal Heart".
It launched Off-Broadway in 1985 and eventually made its way to New York's Great White Way in 2011.
TV guru Ryan Murphy adapted the play for a TV movie in 2014, starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, and Julia Roberts.
Kramer was also known for his 1992 play "The Destiny of Me", a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Outside of his writing, Kramer's activism led him to found the Gay Men's Health Crisis, a support group to help those who had tested HIV positive. He was subsequently forced out of the organisation in 1983, and went on to establish the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, known as ACT UP, through which he organised protests to bring attention to the deadly disease spreading through the gay community.
