Samantha Fox (American actress)
Samantha Fox | |
---|---|
Born | Stasia Micula December 3, 1950[1][2] New York City, U.S. |
Died | April 22, 2020 New York City, U.S. | (aged 69)
Education | Sarah Lawrence College[3] Hunter College[3] |
Occupation | Pornographic actress |
Years active | 1975–1984[4] |
Era | Golden Age of Porn |
Notable work | Jack 'n Jill 1980 Roommates 1982 A Night to Dismember 1983 |
Partner | Bobby Astyr (1978–2002; his death)[4] |
Stasia Micula
Early life
Stasia Micula was born in 1950 in New York City.[5][6][7] Her father worked as a foreign diplomat.[7] She attended Sarah Lawrence College for art.[3]
Career
Fox acted in both porn and
1970s
Fox started her career in porn industry in 1975.[4] At the encouragement of her then husband, Fox modeled for adult magazines[3] including Cheri and Hustler.[4] She also worked briefly as a prostitute.[3] The following year,[8] Fox was discovered by a film production company when she accidentally knocked on the door of the company, thinking it was a magazine. She was recruited for porn on the spot.[7][8]
Her first film was Here Comes the Bride in 1977,[3] followed by Oddysex with director Gerard Damiano.[9]
She starred in Chuck Vincent's 1978 film Bad Penny,[6][10] and proceeded to work with Vincent throughout her career in both porn and mainstream films. In 1978, she met Bobby Astyr, while filming Double Your Pleasure. Fox described him as "something of a jerk." Fox and Astyr eventually started dating and remained a couple for 24 years until the death of Astyr from lung cancer in 2002.[4] Fox co-starred in Tigresses And Other Man-Eaters in 1979. It was Ron Jeremy's first film, and Fox was the first woman he had sex with on film.[11]
1980s
By the 1980s, Fox was living in New York City, rooming with fellow actress
"When Samantha first worked for me four years ago, she was terrible. She couldn't act, her makeup and hair looked awful. But, she's worked hard and today she's a complete professional who could appear in any kind of film."
Chuck Vincent, Superstars of Sex, September 1982[9]
In March 1981, Fox said she was a "former drug addict" and had been clean for a year and a half.[12] A few months later, she won her second AFAA Best Actress award for This Lady is a Tramp.[14] In 1981, she also co-starred in Centerfold Fever with Tiffany Clark, Kandi Barbour, Ron Jeremy and others.[15]
In 1982, she co-starred in The Devil in Miss Jones 2, the sequel to the seminal The Devil in Miss Jones.[4] That same year, she co-starred in Roommates, playing the role of a call girl who seeks to leave sex work to work in television.[16] Her role in Roommates was called "one of the top erotic performances ever", by Pornstar Classics.[17]
Fox played the lead role in the 1983 Doris Wishman horror A Night to Dismember.[18] One of her final adult films was in 1984, Jack & Jill 2 the sequel, again with Jack Wrangler. By this point, Fox was again struggling with drug addiction and she began detoxing from drug use; at the same time, suffered from
In 1985, Fox was indicted on federal charges in Utah for being part of a phone sex operation in which children in Utah were able to call a number and hear sexually explicit recordings that Fox had made.[19][20] The charges were later dropped.[17] Three years later, the federal Telephone Decency Act would be passed, outlawing phone sex nationally.[21] That same year, she had roles in Streetwalkin'[22] and Playgirl.[23]
Fox continued acting in mainstream films, co-starring in Chuck Vincent's 1987 film Warrior Queen alongside Sybil Danning.[24]
1990s
After leaving the film industry, Fox attended
Views on the film industry
When Fox started in the adult film industry, money did not matter to her – "I didn't take it seriously, it was pocket money."[8] In a 1980 interview, Fox shared that she learned "a lot about my own sexuality by playing in adult movies. I am a lot freer now than I was before."[12] Fox continued to believe adult films could teach adults to explore their sexuality into the late 1980s. She also acknowledged that the porn industry can be "manipulative" and "abusive, if I'd let people take advantage of me."[8]
Out of the over 100 films in her canon, Fox's favorite was her first, Here Comes the Bride, from 1977. However, the 1979 film,
By the mid-1980s, Fox expressed interest in seeing "prettier" adult films and more equality in the roles played by men and women, including less male dominance over female characters.[8]
Later life and death
Fox lived in the East Village in New York City.[26] She died from a cardiovascular illness related to suspected COVID-19 complications at her home on April 22, 2020.[26][27]
References
- ^ "R.I.P. Samantha Fox (1950-2020)". The Rialto Report. May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
- ^ "Porno Star Samantha Fox Arrested For Lewd Acts". The Leaf-Chronicle. Associated Press. December 16, 1982. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-61592-631-2.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Kernes, Mark. "Inductee: Samantha Fox". AVN. Archived from the original on April 22, 2006. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ a b "R.I.P. Samantha Fox (1950-2020)". The Rialto Report. May 3, 2020. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
- ^ ISBN 9780671468446. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
- ^ a b c d Mannweiler, David (June 27, 1979). "Barefoot All Over". The Indianapolis News. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
- ^ a b c d e f "The Show World Interviews - Vivienne Maricevic". The Rialto Report. December 17, 2017. Archived from the original on August 21, 2019. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ a b "Roommates (1981): The Projection Booth Podcast". The Rialto Report. January 6, 2019. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-57344-705-8.
- ISBN 978-0-609-80991-4.
- ^ a b c "Porn queens, newsmen and union leaders". Burlington Daily Times News. Associated Press. March 9, 1981. Retrieved July 4, 2019.
- ^ Grant, Lee (July 12, 1980). "Awards Given for Best Erotic Films". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
- ^ "Clipped From The Gazette". The Gazette. July 18, 1981. p. 86. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ "'Centerfold Fever' (1981): Behind the Scenes of an Adult Movie". The Rialto Report. November 17, 2019. Archived from the original on December 22, 2019. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ Sachs, Ben (July 2014). "Tomorrow night Doc Films unearths a relic from the age of subversive hard-core cinema". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on August 14, 2014. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ a b Porn Star Classics website
- ISBN 9780786472277.
- ^ "The feds dial P for pornographic". Daily News. April 26, 1985. p. 371. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ Kilpatrick, James (August 16, 1985). "Dial-a-dirty is a lucrative racket". Newspapers.com. The Daily Advertiser. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ Kernes, Mark (February 2, 2014). "The Industry Remembers Gloria Leonard". Adult Video News. 30 (3): 22–23, 112. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
- ^ Freedman, Richard (December 13, 1985). "'Streetwalkin'': The bad story of a girl who lives her life by the hook or by crook". Spokane Chronicle. p. 56. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ "Samantha Fox". BFI. Archived from the original on May 29, 2017. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ Bokamper, Jerry (June 8, 2000). "Lava and kisses from Pompeii". Albany Democrat-Herald. p. 48. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
- ^ "AVN Awards Past Winners". AVN.com. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved August 8, 2007.
- ^ a b Kernes, Mark (May 1, 2020). "Early Adult Star Samantha Fox Passes Quietly At Home AVN". AVN. Retrieved January 9, 2021.
- ^ "Addio a Samantha Fox, coronavirus fatale all'icona del cinema hard degli anni '80". Notizie Audaci (in Italian). May 3, 2020. Retrieved January 9, 2021.
External links
- Samantha Fox at IMDb
- Samantha Fox at the Internet Adult Film Database
- Samantha Fox at the Adult Film Database
- "My Life In Pornography, Part I: A Girl's Best Friend" by Glenn Kenny from Thought Catalog
- Samantha Fox obituary from the Rialto Report