danny pintauro hiv
Danny Pintauro on ’Oprah: Where Are They Now?’

 Danny Pintauro, the former child star, revealed to Oprah that he was diagnosed with HIV in 2003. Now 39, the actor best known for ’80s TV sitcom Who’s the Boss? and the film Cujo spoke about his experience during an episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now?

According to an OWN recap of the episode on Huffington Post, Pintauro said he contracted the virus while experimenting with crystal meth as a way to explore sex. “I was doing crystal meth, which completely ruins your immune system. I’d been doing it at that point very briefly, but it was three weeks or so, off and on,” he explains. “I had just come out of a two-year relationship, and I discovered in that relationship that there was more I wanted to explore sexually. Crystal meth takes away your inhibitions.… And if you want to explore that adventurous side, taking the drug is going to put you there.

“I was experimenting,” he continued. “And believe it or not, I thought that I was being safe in that encounter. I know exactly when it happened.”

Pintauro was outed as gay in an article in the National Enquirer back in 1997, the same year Ellen Degeneres came out. Although he was used to publicity, he wasn’t ready to acknowledge his HIV status until now. Why? “It’s just a big deal, you know? It’s not something that people are really talking about right now.

“What I want my community to realize is we need to take better care of ourselves,” he told Oprah.

Now married to Wil Tabares, Pintauro manages a restaurant in Las Vegas. He said he wants to help other gay men: “What I want my community to realize is we need to take better care of ourselves.”

This recent Instagram photo of him and his husband hints at a future life as an activist.



Judith Light, who played his mother on the TV show, told Fox News 5 that she was proud of Pintauro. “He is being very proactive,” said Light, who has been a prominent AIDS fundraiser and spokesperson since the early days of the epidemic. “He’s giving a different face to a disease that has still not been handled [well]. You can see how well he is doing.”