History's 250 Greatest Gay-Porn Stars
My heavily illustrated list, last updated in 2019, is new, improved, all-era-inclusive ... and ready for your suggestions
May 22, 2026
One: Generally speaking, it’s thought that women probably emotionalize sex a bit too much for their own good. If that’s true, then men definitely mythologize it too much for our own good. We can sometimes treat our partners like crap while still holding our heads up high, yet can wax nostalgic about unbelievably satisfying sexual encounters, revering them as if they were religious experiences.
Two: For gay men, with no societal instruction on what happens when two guys fall in love or even just lust, pornography was for decades the primary means by which we could find those answers.
Perhaps those two observations help to explain why we take our porn so very seriously, why we could probably talk for hours about specific scenes that opened our eyes to new activities of which we’d previously never dreamed, and why we are so madly in love with certain familiar faces (and other parts) who seemed to teach us how to do “it” and gave us permission to stop worrying our parents would find out so we could simply enjoy being pigs — at least on occasion.
With all that out of the way, what follows is my subjective list of “History’s 250 Greatest Gay-Porn Stars.”
In choosing which guys to feature and where to feature them, I’m using my own taste; my impressions as a former gay-porn industry professional (I worked for Torso, Honcho, Inches, Playguy, Mandate) as to each actor’s overall impact during his career; each performer’s observable longevity as an icon; and each performer’s groundbreaking status.
The upper part of the list is top-heavy with classic performers, and I think that is as it should be; this is not a snapshot of who’s hot at the moment, but an attempt to catalogue the men who’ve made the industry over the past 50 years.
That said, I’ve also gone out of my way to give props to guys working today who I think have already made enough of a mark to warrant inclusion.
It’s not science, so please don’t flunk me.
I am offering a ranked Top 50, and the rest are in alphabetical order — while I feel confident justifying my Top 50, deciding who might be #84 vs. #175 felt arbitrary.
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It’s sobering how many of them are dead — few from the Golden Age of gay adult films (let’s say the ‘70s through 1990?) didn’t contract HIV since they were working condom-free both on- and often off-screen. Many others have succumbed to vices perhaps more common among guys who sell sex than among the general population. That’s another thing to think about, how porn is a lot like the United States — obsessed with sex but too ashamed of it to deal with our interest in it, or to deal with the very real issues that crop up among those who make the porn we consume. Too often, our porn idols are shunned in practice while being venerated in theory.
The stigma is changing, as words like “hustler” are replaced by “sex worker,” and as young’uns are, increasingly, exploiting their own sex lives via social media, making it highly likely that we will have our first dick-pic or beaver-pic POTUS sooner rather than later. That is why I’ve tried to include some of the guys who are leading the way on OnlyFans and other services.
Speaking of the dead, I’ve attempted to include everyone’s birthday and date of death (along with the cause). If I have gotten any of this wrong, I would appreciate your comments.
If you are any of these guys or have direct information about any of these guys — what they were like in person (if you met them), where they may be now, or any other tidbits — or if you would like to politely inform me I’ve left someone out, please do comment.
Finally, I’m very interested if you have vintage gay material you would like to pass along, especially from the 1980s and before — magazines, ephemera, photography.
If lists or porn or ranking people turn you off, I promise, my next post will be something different.
Here is my Top 50:
#50 — Eric Hanson (b. May 29, 1969)
Somehow, this iconic star was omitted from my first stab at this list — mea culpa.
Gorgeous Eric, he of the movie-star looks, was one of the primary Falcon faces in the late ‘90s ahead of his sudden retirement in 2003. Before it was all over, Jersey-born Hanson made a huge impression on the world of porn, perhaps most memorably getting stuffed by Jack Simmons in The Freshmen (1997) — which he recalled as his debut.
Hanson, who had gotten into porn via a talent scout who met him at the Copa in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told Vincent Lambert in 2000 he was more bi when he started, but left the business more gay. He also offered this exchange:
VL: “Is there any special fantasy you’d like to act out?”
EH: “I would love to be gang-banged by an entire football team — right there on the field, right during half-time. And televised! [Laughs] That would be hot. They could shoot their loads all over me — totally flood me.”
VL: “Would you say you’re an exhibitionist?”
EH: “No.”
Oh, Eric, please make a comeback with that scene as the centerpiece.
#49 — Dawson (b. 1973)
This guy had the mystique component of being a porn star down pat, even in the digital age, when mystique could easily be dispelled with a click. He was a pioneer of sorts, becoming perhaps the first well-known gay-porn star in the HIV era to be HIV positive and to shoot bareback movies, most notoriously Dawson’s 50 Load Weekend (2005), dubbed “the most important gay porn film ever made” by Huffington Post and compared to illegal underage pornography by Dan Savage for its potentially negative messaging.
Super handsome, Dawson’s louche, almost blasé acceptance of loads from any- and everyone titillated an audience fatigued by resolutely safe-sex commercial fare. With Dawson, they felt they were watching someone doing what he wanted, what he needed to do, come what may.
The Treasure Island staple has spoken about being addicted to the white stuff, saying:
“To me, life is about experiencing ... going through what life has to offer.”
He stopped working — but remains a legend to many.
#48 — J.W. King (James Leonard Waldrop, July 21, 1955-December 15, 1986/AIDS)
King was a macho, stereotypically porn-stached Texan star of the early ‘80s who made huge impressions in Wet Shots (1980); Pacific Coast Highway (1981); Rawhide (1981), in which he stuffed Chris Burns with a giant dildo and his giant member simultaneously; Brothers Should Do It (1981) with his namesake (and non-relative) Jon King; and These Based Are Loaded (1982).
Although the magazine’s higher-ups frowned on gay-porn actors, King — as Jim Waldrop — made the cut as a centerfold in Playgirl’s January 1981 issue, demonstrating that his rugged appeal bridged the sexes.
As for his take on why he did porn, he told Jeremy Hughes for In Touch in the ‘80s:
“I’m not an exhibitionist in the sense that I get off knowing that people are looking at me. It’s just a chance to be in front of a camera and get that experience. It doesn’t bother me to be nude and have sex in front of the camera. I’m not ashamed of my body. I know I have an attractive body.”
Once he tested HIV positive, King spent the last two and a half years of his life waitering in L.A. before succumbing to AIDS complications on December 5, 1986. His partner, John Murphy, also died of the disease.
#47 — Max Konnor aka Max Conner aka Isaiah Foxxx (b. November 10, 1986)
With a background in theater arts, this relentless top from Albany, Georgia, went from zero to sexty (sorry) with a slew of hard-pounding appearances with Icon Male, Black Rayne, Lucas Entertainment, Raging Stallion, DawgPoundUSA, and more, not to mention his thriving OnlyFans account, which showcases his insane body and insane sex drive.
As with many of the more recent names on this list, due to the changing nature of porn (technologically and socially), his performances are far more raw and real than those of some past icons, who were sometimes constricted by clunky cameras, society’s disdain for all things sexual, and, well, their own heterosexuality; he clearly loves what — and who — he does.
He’s also not afraid to speak up, such as when he mentioned on Twitter that he isn’t on board with the term “BBC.” Mayhem ensued.
Konnor, a Cam4 legend, runs his own porn-powered talent company.
#46 — Michael Christopher (b. 1949?)
This strapping Michigander had that ‘70s look in spades — great hair, Travolta body. He launched in 1982 with Best Little Warehouse in L.A. (1982) and Skin Deep (1982), and was red-hot in Pleasure Beach (1983). The vers bisexual said the latter film was the one in which he was the most turned on personally.
His 1982 flick How I Got the Story casts him as a jock being interviewed by a horny reporter — when there’s a fag on the play. It’s prototypical for that kind of scene, a nasty Nova slice of heaven.
He worked for a variety of companies, including Catalina, HIS and others, and was a staple of XXX mags, back when guys actually paid for them, but retired without a trace (that I’ve found) in 1993. There is a rumor he died in 2012, and one person suggested he lived in Pensacola, Florida — but I can confirm neither maybe-a-factoid.
Don’t miss the above rare, on-camera interview with the retro stud, taken from 1984’s Trick Time. It’s rather … nosy?
#45 — Rex Chandler (Paul Fow, b. August 14, 1966)
One of the first stars I became aware of who was gay-for-pay (it took me a long time to wrap my head around the concept), Chandler — a onetime Mr. Michigan — entered the field at the very end of the ‘80s and starred successfully in a series of top-only roles, notably Heat in the Night (1989) and A View to a Thrill (1990), between 1989 and 1991.
In 1996, sexy Rexy made news by touring in the play Making Porn by Ronnie Larsen, which was art imitating life. He also showed up in Gregg Araki’s arthouse film The Doom Generation (1995).
#44 — Richard Locke (Richard Holt Locke, June 11, 1941-September 25, 1995)
Richard Locke, the so-called “Daddy of all Daddies,” was born in California. By the time he started shooting porn in the ‘70s, he already had a distinctive fatherly look — trade for days — even though he wasn’t quite in his mid-thirties yet.
He was recruited into porn by a casting-director friend, making his debut for director Jim West in Dreamer (1975) for HIS. He was only in one scene (with Clay Grant), but it stuck. It was promoted with posters in the NYC subway system (I want one), which caught the eye of Joe Gage aka Tim Kincaid, one of porn’s true auteurs.
Locke himself is a seminal part of gay porn thanks to his appearances in a trio of Gage classics: Kansas City Trucking Company (1976), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1977) and L.A. Tool and Die (1979). In them, his performances are elemental; he never looks like he is putting on his masculinity, and he always looks sweaty, ripe and ready. He is who they were talking about when they described a “Gage Man.”
Locke considered porn secondary to his main vocation — building houses powered by solar energy. He also toured gay theaters from 1977 on speaking and meeting fans, and would one day become an AIDS activist thanks in part to his comfort conversing with the community.
In 1978, his younger brother Robert, also gay, interviewed him for Blueboy. It’s a must-read, as it is a rare example of a verifiably real interview with a gay-porn star from the past, and one of the only examples I could find of a Golden Age porn star’s family commenting on their work.
Here is the level at which Locke thought:
“Don Juan has said in the books by Carlos Castaneda that a warrior, though he’s frightened to the tip of his toes, always puts on a facade of having his feet on the ground, of being unafraid. There have been times in my life when I’ve been very frightened, but I’ve always maintained a facade of having it together. I’m sure that I have insecurities that I don’t know about. It’s always a progressive thing. Once you accomplish one thing, you’ve got another thing to accomplish. It’s something that’s ongoing; you’ve still got balls and chains to throw off until the day you die.
“When I — I can’t say I became gay— when I recognized that I was gay, I threw off a ball and chain, but that was just the first in a series of them. To me it was the first because up until that time nobody knew I was gay.”
Retired from porn for years, Locke made a non-sexual appearance in 1995’s The Diamond Stud before dying of AIDS complications in 1996.
#43 — Buster (Jeffrey Wayne Cole, August 23, 1958-May 10, 1991/AIDS)
If Buster had never done anything else but accept pilot O.G. Johnson’s johnson in Night Flight (1986), that would’ve been enough. As it happens, the Virginia native did only around 15 films (not counting packaged properties, many of which were posthumously released), but he did some sizzlers after launching his career in the late ‘70s — namely, Sailor in the Wild (1983) and The Bigger the Better (1984).
This clean-cut, dirty-minded power bottom was a hard worker, and his diligence was not always while naked — he ambitiously and bravely ran for a city council seat in California in 1986.
Challenged about his past during that race, Cole was quoted in The Los Angeles Times:
“Jeffrey Wayne Cole, 27, an actor, said he wanted to slow West Hollywood’s growth. Cole admitted that his acting career might pose a campaign issue in itself. Until two years ago, Cole said, he acted in homosexually oriented adult films, using the name of ‘Buster.’ Cole at first said the films were only R-rated, but then added, ‘Maybe some of them were X-rated. Anyway, I’m not making them anymore.’”
His experience with HIV had inspired him to give back. If only he’d been allowed to try, we may have so much more to remember him by.
Instead, he battled substance abuse and died in need of money. In spite of his honorable military service, he was denied a Marine burial and reportedly wound up interred in an unmarked grave. LGBTQ+ people deserve, and always have deserved, so much more.
#42 — Dirk Caber (Jack Parton, b. September 13, 1971)
Caber is arguably the premier muscle-daddy of porn, having gotten there both on his own and as the former husband of similarly limits-free daddy Jesse Jackman.
How else has he gotten to where he is today? Double penetration, water sports and intergenerational taboo roleplay are all in a day’s work for this modern gay superstar.
In 2015, he revealed to writer Benjamin Riley that he had to come out a second time — as a porn god — to his parents once his face got too famous. Their response? “That makes sense.”
And it does.
#41 — Brian Hawks aka Brian Hawkes (b. November 27, 1959-mid-’80s/car crash?)
This blond bad boy worked under other names (David Anders, Shawn McIvan, Charles Michael Jourdan, Angel Damien — call him anything, just call him!), burning a — um — hole through early-’80s porn with a swimmer’s build that kept him afloat through various adventures in bottoming and topping.
He was at his zenith with Brian’s Boys (1983) and also stood out in The Bigger the Better (1984), which came out shortly before he vanished, rumored to have perished in a car collision. According to Retro Males, in April 1985, he gave an interview while dancing in NYC, saying:
“Most of the people in the business, the people who pay the boys, are fuck-overs. They take as much as they can while giving as little as possible. This whole business is a big bunch of lies!”
Seems as likely that he left the business willingly as it is that he died in a car crash.
