Billy Dee

Not to be confused with Billy Dee Williams or Billy Dee Smith.
Billy Dee
Born
William Randall Daniels

(1951-09-25) September 25, 1951 (age 73)
San Diego, California, United States
Other namesObe-Wahn, Billie Dee, Billy D., Billy De, Ron Anderson, Robert Franklin, Billy Daniels, Obi Wahn
Years active1978–1996

William Randall Daniels (born September 25, 1951), better known by the stage name Billy Dee, is a retired American adult film actor.

Life and career

Born and raised in San Diego, California, Daniels is of mixed ancestry, of Irish, Mexican and African heritage, one of six children; he has four brothers and a sister.[1] He worked from the age of 11, often on his grandfather's farm milking the cows, and lost his virginity at 14 in a barn, although he did not have sex again until he was 17. By the early 1970s, he began appearing in short 8mm film loops, appearing in the first of them at age 24. By 1978, at age 27, he appeared in his first big-budget porn flick, The Legend Of Lady Blue with fellow porn stars Gloria Leonard and John Leslie.[1][2]

Daniels had the most prominent part of his career during the second-wave of the so-called Golden Age of Porn from the mid-late 1980s to the early-mid 1990s. In a period when the segregation of pornographic actors on racial lines was a sensitive issue and top female stars were often reluctant in performing with black males,[1] being a very light-skinned African American man ("everyone thought he just had a great tan")[3] and speaking "smoothly",[4] Daniels could pass for white, securing him roles in top-rated pornographic productions with prominent porn stars such as Marilyn Chambers (Marilyn Chambers' Private Fantasies series) and one-time girlfriend Nikki Knights,[3] following his debut with a small role in The Legend Of Lady Blue (1978) and also making him the only African American actor the 1980s top star Traci Lords had performed with.[5] Nevertheless, he could also play roles in productions with explicit black theme such as the porn parody Chocolate C.H.I.P.S. (1988)[4][6] and Caught from Behind V: Blondes and Blacks (1986), the interracial special release in an anal sex video series. Accordingly, Daniels is today foremost credited as a porn actor who had blurred the colour lines in the American porn industry.[3]

He was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2002.[7]

Personal life

Billy Dee had a daughter with a girlfriend in the U.K. and later went on to marry adult actress Suzannah French.[8] Now the grandfather to eight, and great grandfather to two, Daniels shuffles time between the U.K in Bristol and the U.S.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Meet Billy Dee: The American man living in Bristol who has starred in 600 porn films". BristolPost.com. 2014-11-27. Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved 2015-05-28.
  2. ^ The Legend of Lady Blue at IMDb
  3. ^ a b c Adult Hall of Fame Archived November 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ a b Billy Dee - Excalibur Films profile
  5. ^ Traci Lords Interracial
  6. ^ Chocolate C.H.I.P.S. - Porn Parody Archived July 15, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "XRCO". XRCO.com. Retrieved 2008-02-23.
  8. ^ Rialto Report interview with Billy Dee Archived May 21, 2016, at the Wayback Machine


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