AS Text Animation - Can HTML Format Be Kept?

I am working on some text animations using ActionScript (3.0).

The type of animations that I want require tweening each character of the text. Therefore, the way I want to do this is to break apart the text string, create a text field for each character, put it into a sprite, position the sprite so that the characters form a linear text and then tween the individual character sprites.

But the problem is if I have an HTML string of text. If I try to break apart the string, then the HTML tags will break and they will be animated as if part of the text ?

Is there another way of achieving this type of character by character animation ?

Is there a way in which the HTML formatted text can be kept ?