Danny Pintauro is a former child star, the precocious Jonathan on the 1980s hit sitcom “Who’s The Boss?” He also is a former restaurant manager and server, who worked for four years at P.F. Chang’s outposts across Las Vegas.
Even with a well-trimmed beard, Pintauro is recognized — sort of.
“Believe it or not, every time it was, ‘Did I go to high school with you?’ ” Pintauro said. “Because for the people who recognize me, it was that time in their life. They sort of have this weird association, so they don’t put it together. They don’t necessarily know who I am. They just know that they know me.”
Until recently, Pintauro simply was a onetime sitcom actor plugging away to make a living and build a life in Las Vegas with his new spouse, Wil Pintauro-Tabares. The two were married in April 2014.
But Pintauro’s world erupted in September, after the producers of “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” called asking if he’d like to be a guest. Pintauro said he would, and he wanted to tell Oprah something few knew about his life: He is HIV-positive, a fact he’d kept secret for 12 years.
“I’m still feeling a little overwhelmed,” Pintauro said, admitting he hasn’t even scraped the surface of the 500 or so emails he received in the days since appearing with Oprah. “Part of being an activist is to actually write those people back.”
Outreach is what Pintauro, a star for eight years of his youth and an HIV-positive member of society since 2003, stands for today.
“My plan is activism, 100 percent,” he said. “I have no interest in doing anything that involves acting, because I don’t want it to take away from the goals. I don’t want people to think I did this to get on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’”
Pintauro initially moved to Las Vegas to work on the production team for “Vegas! The Show” at the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, but it didn’t work out and he left the show.
“There is no animosity — it was just not the right fit,” he said.
Though he was a drama major at Stanford, he has a passion for restaurant and boutique hotel management, which led him to enter that world — and escape fame, to a large degree — at P.F. Chang’s.
“People forget that when you’re an actor, at the end of the day, it’s a job,” he said. “I’ve just been very fortunate to have great people around me, like Judith Light and also Tony (Danza), who have bonded with me in a great way.”
Pintauro said he wanted to disclose his condition publicly for several years and in 2011 considered an appearance on Winfrey’s daytime show. But the timing was off.
“I’m really glad it didn’t work then because I wasn’t ready,” he said. “I was using the activism to try to put some things in my life in a corner and not have to think about them. I wasn’t making money and didn’t know what to do with my life.”
Pintauro came out as gay in 1997, coerced into the decision by a writer from the National Enquirer who was bent on writing the story whether or not Pintauro cooperated. He agreed to be interviewed, at advice of Light, his TV mother and longtime confidant. The piece was a heartfelt account of Pintauro’s life to that point.
Now he stands as a multileveled spokesman — for living HIV-positive and in his recovery from drug addiction. Pintauro abused meth for three years, starting just before he was diagnosed with HIV.
“I was snorting it and smoking it,” he said. “I hate needles, so I never shot it. But I know it was about the worst thing you can do when you are HIV-positive.”
Pintauro said he contracted the virus through oral sex while he was still using meth.
“There’s research coming out now that is actually showing that meth enhances the replication of the HIV,” he said. “Unfortunately, they kind of go hand in hand because doing meth allows you to want to be in it, uninhibited — you know, ‘I don’t need to use a condom today. I’m in the middle of this crazy good time, and the last thing I want to do is have to do that.’ So, a lot of people end up contracting it because of that.”
Pintauro takes a single pill a day, Complera, to effectively ward off symptoms of HIV. Through it took more than a decade to reach the point of telling the public about his condition, Pintauro told Wil about his health concerns soon after the two met.
“On our first date, before we had our first kiss, he told me he was HIV positive,” Wil recalled. “I took a breath and went, ‘OK.’ And to be honest, it wasn’t even a second guess. I still wanted to see where this would go.”
Using his celebrity cache, Pintauro can tell his story from a powerful platform. The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation is among the national outlets that have contacted him since his announcement. He expects others, in and out of Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, he and Wil hope someday to buy and operate a B&B somewhere “near the water.”
“I haven’t even quite exactly figured out what kind of activism I want to focus on, so give me a month and I will have a really great plan,” Pintauro said. “I’m wading through all of this right now so I can really focus on helping people in the community and everywhere else.”
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