Robert Dupont’s brother Richard posted this pic on Facebook with the caption: “I took this Beautiful photo of my dear friend Alexis Arquette with my brother Robert Duponttwin and Jaid Barrymore. My brother and Alexis were boyfriends for awhile and have remained very close friends. I will miss my friend Alexis so much and will cherish all the memories I have. Good night Alexis I love you. R.I.P. #AlexisArquette #Alexisforever
According Towleroad and multiple news sources, transgender actress and activist Alexis Arquette’s death on Sunday at age 47 was due to AIDS-related complications.
When news of Arquette’s death broke on Sunday no specific cause was named, though TMZ suggested that Arquette had been battling an unnamed illness.
Radar Online has sources confirming that Arquette had been battling AIDS:
“Alexis was living with AIDS and he had an inoperable tumor and he had developed an infection,” [Arquette’s ex-boyfriend] Robert Dupont explained to Radar.
“I was told that went to his liver and throughout his body.”
Dupont, who famously ran in Andy Warhol‘s social circles and was a fixture at New York City’s most infamous club, Studio 54, dated Arquette for several years in the 1990s and said she was placed
“in an induced coma” before passing away.“
You may notice that Dupont is referring to Arquette as “he” as did Alexis’s brother on Sunday. There are many reports that Arquette was living as a man in his final years. On Arquette’s life shortly before his passing, Dupont said,
“He was working as an artist and living in an Actors Fund home in West Hollywood for people with HIV and AIDS. He hated it. People kept breaking into his apartment and they did alcohol and drugs. Alexis hated that. He never did drugs and he didn’t drink… His family offered to have him live with them, but he wanted to be independent.”
Radar said that,
“Towards the end he was in a lot of pain, but he was not going to give up. He was holding on so hard at the end and he was such a fighter. Alexis was sick for so long.”
(via Towleroad)
