Julian St. Jox Top Porn Star

Written by Heidi Pike-Johnson for AVN Magazine

Performer/director Julian St. Jox began his storied porn career following a three-year stint as an Airborne Ranger in the US Army and the subsequent death of his mother.

"I went back home to Baton Rouge and I had a lot of people telling me what I needed to do, so I moved to California from there," he recalled. "I fell in love with California then because I didn't think anyplace would take my mind off of what was going on around me and this place did. I was able to relax here."

St. Jox found himself tending bar at the now-closed Cafİ Rodeo in Beverly Hills. The realization that "rich people don't tip" was what led to St. Jox appearing in his first porn scene with Jeannie Pepper in March of 1990. Of course, having the right neighbors in his apartment building helped.

"I was living in a building with Jeannie, Heather Hunter, Sean Michaels, Bunny Blue," St. Jox said. "I moved to California and I moved into that building. Sheer luck, I just moved into the right building and met the right people.

"Sean and I played basketball and we became friends and he liked the way I handled myself and thought I would do well in this business."

His first video, Filmco's Black Mariah, gave St. Jox a valuable lesson in what he didn't want his career to be about.

"They had a white guy in black face on the cover and Dominique Simone eating watermelon," he said. "I did a skit about my Jewish lawyer, Hymie Schwartz. I really didn't know any better... Doing that video made me not take things in the future that were derogatory towards my race.... It was a good and bad experience. I learned from it and I got to do my first scene with Jeannie Pepper who I had been watching for years back when I was a fan."

St. Jox started appearing in more productions, finding the work enjoyable.

"There was only me and Sean who were working a lot," he said of the industry's black male performers at the time. "It was a different atmosphere at the time because there were maybe a hundred productions every six months as opposed to a hundred a day."

He appeared in such notable productions as the first Wicked Pictures video Arabian Nights, John Leslie's Dog Walker and the very first editions of Video Team's My Baby Got Back and Elegant Angel's Sugarwalls.

In the mid 1990's, St. Jox moved to Europe and continued performing in adult fare there.

"I went to the Cannes Film Festival and I went to work for one person and I just kept working and I just never got to coming back home," he remembered. "There was a lot more work there - I was working 20 to 22 days a month."

He still works frequently in Europe, most recently appearing in Private's The Private Gladiator 2 in the role of a Roman slave broker. He also works in Japanese porn productions regularly.

St. Jox eventually made the move behind the camera for Video Team and directed Midori's Flava, which won AVN's Best Ethnic-Themed Video Award in 1998. St. Jox also directs Wildlife Productions' Premium Black Pussy Search and International Flava lines. He plans to release new black couples-friendly plot-based productions through his own production company, Black Market Video, this year.

On being inducted in AVN's Hall of Fame, St. Jox says, "I felt very, very honored to be included because I feel that I have made a contribution in the way that people look at porn. Everybody didn't have to be Stepin Fetchit. I try to handle myself in a good way. I am representing more than myself when I am out there doing this so I want to make sure that I do it with style and grace.