Career
Educated in Saint John"s, he was an honours student before quitting after Grade 10 to pursue an acting career in Toronto. After briefly working on a children"s touring theatre show, he landed his first television role in the drama series Police Surgeon. In 1975, Sexton took a brief sabbatical from CODCO to study at the Toronto Dance Theatre.
In 1985 and 1986, Sexton and Malone wrote and performed in a series of television specials for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, called The South and M Comic Book, which in turn led to CODCO landing its own series in 1987.
After CODCO"s run concluded in 1992, Sexton and Malone wrote and starred in a Canadian Broadcasting Company television special, The National Doubt, satirizing the constitutional debates of the early 1990s. Sexton subsequently wrote a semi-autobiographical film, Adult Children of Alcoholics: The Musical, which was in production in November 1993 when Sexton, who was openly gay, fell ill due to complications from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He died on December 13 of that year.
Malone subsequently campaigned for Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome education in Sexton"s memory. The Tommy Sexton Centre, a new assisted housing complex for people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, was opened in Saint John"s in 2006.
In 2009, several drag queens in the city put together "Ravishing in Red", a tribute show to Sexton, as a fundraiser for the Sexton Centre.
One performer, Betty "Boo" Kakke, singled him out as Newfoundland"s "clown prince". Sexton"s mother, Sara Sexton, became a major figure in Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome awareness in Newfoundland and Labrador following her son"s death. Sara Sexton was announced as an inductee to the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2013, and was inducted in February 2014.