'70s and '80s porn star Jamie Gillis, a/k/a "The Hebrew Hammer," has died at the age of 66 of cancer. A veteran of over 400 films from the golden age of adult cinema, most of them shot on film, Gillis, a bisexual, was a famously gonzo character. Frequent co-star Vanessa Del Rio remembered him as "very wild and horny," while the Penetrating Insights blog described him thusly:
"Often cited as the greatest actor in porn, frequently reviled as being too extreme or too hardcore, Gillis embodied many of the more emotive aspects of male sexuality: charm and seduction, humour and intelligence, fearlessness and lust, disgust and rage. His range [was] elastic, his performances visceral. He effortlessly conveyed gravitas and ease onscreen...Jamie Gillis could be three or four separately interesting guys (the great porn actor, the funnyman, the innovator, the sicko)."
The sequence in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 film Boogie Nights with Burt Reynolds and Heather Graham in the limousine entitled "On the Lookout" was directly inspired by the limo scenes in Jamie Gillis' "On the Prowl" series.
Born April 20, 1943 in New York City, James "Jamie" Gillis trained as a legitimate actor. In the early '70s he began appearing in pornographic films, often under such pseudonyms as "Buster Hymen" and "Jamie Rugman" and continued to work in porn through the late 1990s.
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