Gay Porn Icon Billy Herrington Dies At 48

Billy Herrington, who starred in numerous adult films for such studios as Colt, All Worlds and Jimmy Z Productions between 1999 and 2005, died on Friday, reportedly due to injuries sustained in an automobile accident. He was 48 years old.  Few details regarding the circumstances of his death were available on Monday morning. Herrington’s passing was first revealed in a Facebook post by film director Chi Chi LaRue on Saturday, but Herrington’s mother, Kathleen Wood also announced her son’s passing via Facebook about three hours later. Herrington entered the adult industry after a girlfriend submitted nude pictures of him to Playgirl magazine in the early 1990s. Herrington claimed that he had no idea that she had submitted the photos to a Playgirl contest called “Real Men of the Month.” She forged his signature on the submission forms, and he was surprised to find that he won the contest, which came with a prize of $500. After Jim French from Colt Studios saw the photos, he reached out to Herrington, and after a delay of about two years, the two met, leading to Herrington posing for a Colt Studios calendar—and appearing on television on The Ricki Lake Show and The Dating Game. Though he said that he grew up believing that he was heterosexual, appearing in gay porn films helped him to fully embrace his bisexuality. “I was aware of my heterosexuality before I was aware of my bisexuality, only because it was more acceptable in my surroundings growing up,” he told an interviewer in 1999. “I’m not entirely gay and I’m not entirely straight. I consider myself to be truly bisexual. I have a girlfriend at the moment and I have a boyfriend. They both live with me in my house, and they get along fantastically.” Following his porn career, Herrington continued to work as a model and a stripper, but perhaps was best known for his accidental popularity as an internet meme in Japan, where thanks to hundreds or even thousands of homemade online videos based on a clip from a wrestling workout video in which he starred, Herrington developed a new and equally enthusiastic fan following who knew him as “Aniki,” or “Big Brother.” The craze in Japan for Herrington’s internet videos, which showed him wrestling clad only in “tighty whitey” style underwear, was so intense that when he finally visited the country in 2009, a personal appearance in Tokyo’s high-tech Akihabara district reportedly drew more than 10,000 fans—and led to a toy manufacturer creating a posable action figure of Herrington called “Panty Wrestling Big Brother.” Fans expressed their grief over Herrington’s passing on social media, with the Facebook post by Herrington’s mother shared nearly 4,000 times.