Well in our very casual and unscientific survey we discovered that there is not one single answer. The majority of them just simply disappear back into anonymity and sadly many of them do not physically survive.
Arpad Miklos, Eric Rhodes, Wilfrid Knight and Roman Ragazzi all took their own lives, and in Ragazzi’s case it was after he had been exposed and after lost his job at the Israeli Consulate. Others like Josh Weston lost their lives to complications from HIV. In fact, in 2013, the number of suicides or deaths of those in the gay porn industry under the age of 55 exceeded a dozen, which is more than twice the annual average. Some sadly like Christopher Luke McAteer aka Clay at Corbin Fisher who shot himself are as young as 18- years old.
Also several of them like Bobby Clark, Phenix Saint, and Trevor Knight ‘retire’ very publicly and then are back on our screens before we can say ‘safe sex’. Others do however find a whole new life waiting in their future, and we tracked down a few of them to see how they were coping now they were fully clothed.
Jake Floyd aka Jake Genesis didn’t return to the police force when he retired, he just turned to God instead. However after Joey Santiago had been worshipped as ‘Gustavo Arrango’ he went one better and became a Priest at the House of Prayer Monte Santo in Puerto Rico.
Colton Ford made a sort of successful transition from porn to pop star. He covered Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered with a dance mix that went to be no. 9 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart. Fredrik Elkund aka Tag Eriksson who went from being a successful businessman in his native Sweden to become a top international porn performer, then parlayed that into becoming a top real estate broker and a star of Bravo TV’s Million Dollar Listing NY.
When Shawn Loftis aka Collin O’Neal hung up his jockstrap he became a teacher in Miami before his past was revealed to the authorities, today he has a successful new career as an iReporter for CNN. Kevin Hodge aka Hytch Cawke also became an educator and was the Head of the English Department of a School in Massachusetts until the local FOX TV station publicly exposed his past, which promptly ended his career.
Gay-for-pay Kurt Wild ‘retired’ after his wife gave birth to their fifth child. Now he is a full-time father and he says, without a trace of irony, a wildlife photographer too.
Britain’s own Aiden Shaw dominated gay porn in the ’90s with both his massive personal endowment and his clever novels and memoirs, and then at the age of 47 became a silver-fox high fashion menswear model.
Tom Judson aka Gus Mattox career path is completely unique. Judson was a successful musical theatre actor and performer who transitioned into a porn star when he was in his 40s, which is usually when others are making their exits. He made a big splash for two years picking up a GayVN Performer of the Year before putting his clothes back on for good. He can often be found performing his own one-man musical, Canned Ham in theatres that talks about his life as a naked star.
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We did however find several porn stars trying to see what life would be like if they just drop the word ‘porn’ from their job title and turn their hand to acting in more mainstream movies. It’s a big jump from screaming out ‘give it to me big boy!’ to quoting some soliloquy from the Bard so luckily most of them do the crossover in baby steps plumping for roles in movies that won’t stretch their talents too far.
Plus many of them opt for parts that demand they are naked for at least one scene to remind us all what their greatest attributes still look like.
Dylan Vox aka Brad Brenton was one of the stars in the TV series called The Lair which doesn’t totally count as a complete break with the past as it is the story of a gay sex club run by vampires who are into sucking more than just necks of the cast (of mainly porn stars) who have somehow forgotten their clothes along the way. The plots are also as soft as the sex.
Vox fared better in Longhorns a very likeable romantic comedy although it seems like the director must have been worried that the audience may feel that the plot was a little thin in parts, so he had most of the cast proudly dropping their trousers just in case our attention was drooping. Since then however, he has had a steady stream of roles in B-movies from The Asylum Company who specialise in ‘mockbuster movies’. These are films that are released to coincide with those of mega studio epics in order to capitalise on the hubbub surrounding the big-budget movies such as Hercules Reborn that preceded Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson. They may never qualify him for an Oscar but Vox did get one good review ‘he pretty much steals what little thunder there was to steal’ wrote a critic, and it is after all work on the silver screen, and he does get to keep his clothes on.
The heavily inked Frankie Valenti aka multi-award-winning porn performer Johnny Hazzard was another (ex) porn performer who also appeared in The Lair, then went on to put in a surprisingly impressive performance in a lightweight movie called Tiger Orange which is about to be released on VOD. On the strength of this one role film and with his new T-shirt company Valenti wants us, and himself, to completely forget his xxx-rated movies so he declined our invitation to interview him for this article.
Sean Paul Lockhart aka Brent Corrigan aka Fox Ryder has gone one better than his peers and after a brief but intense career as a vivacious porn star, he moved into mainstream movies both in front and behind the camera. True his first ‘legit’ role was in the very questionable Judas Kiss a gay sci-fi movie, which features a plotline where the protagonist had sex with himself. Corrigan did, however, fare better though in a melodramatic gay thriller called Truth, and even with its howler of a script, he turned in a memorable performance. Then in 2013, he directed himself in Triple Crossed a rather inoffensive gay thriller/romance for which he at least deserves an ‘A’ for effort.
François Sagat the rugged French porn star with a tattooed scalp followed bit parts in two mainstream horror movies Saw VI and ‘L.A. Zombie’ with a starring role in Man At Bath, which thanks to Sagat’s wooden performance was probably one of the worst movies we sat through in 2014.
Thankfully for all of us he has subsequently retired to focus on his own clothing line.
This article was taken from our PORN ISSUE (13) July 2015 and now forms part of our Being A Porn Star Series.
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Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you'd like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.