"I just did the movies and never thought about the recognition that came with them."
Peter North
Peter North is one of the most famous male porn stars in the pornographic video industry; with a career spanning over twenty years and an impressive listed filmography as a performer of (as of posting) 1627 films, he's not done too badly for himself. He's worked with some of the most famous female porn superstars, including Asia Carrera, Jenna Jameson, Christy Canyon, Jewel De'Nyle... and even the underage (but they didn't know it at the time) Traci Lords.
My introduction to the legend...
Back in the ago, I used to work for a large record / video store chain. This is back in the days before DVDs were around (so yes, very long ago) and I was a young, naive girl of but sixteen years. Well, I say 'naive', I mean... damnit, I'm not going to dig a hole for myself. Anyway. We, of course, would stock porn videos. And we, of course, would have great fun ordering and selling said porn videos. Ordering because seriously, take a pin and and place at random on a piece of paper; all the titles look the same after a while anyway. You never knew what you were going to get. It was like a lucky dip. On the more quiet evenings one of us might have been bored enough to run through the lists that we got through from the video distributors and pick out some of the more interesting looking ones. I remember the quiet week of anticipation that one of my colleagues spent waiting for 'Snake in the Monkey's Shadow' to appear. When it finally arrived and turned out to be a martial arts movie, not a marital arts movie, I thought he might actually cry.
We had to do a stock-take twice a year that would be done overnight by two or three people. It was only a small shop, so this wasn't impossible to do. Now in this situation you of course have a video running to keep you amused. There'd been a porn film sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks that we'd been intensely curious about. We did keep meaning to take it home and watch it sometime (we used to do this all the time; technically not stealing, as we'd bring it back the next day, but I'm sure the company wouldn't have seen it that way) but we kept forgetting. This was, of course, the perfect opportunity, as long as we kept it on mute. I forget the name of video; but there was a small line of blurb on the back that had been catching our eye. Just the seven words. Actually, it was more than that, but time has cut it down to just the seven in my head: "... caught in a Peter North cum shower."
You see, Peter North is famous in the industry for the copious amounts of ejaculate that he can produce; this particular talent means that he does a lot of facial work. And boy, what a talent. We watched the video. We paused the video. We rewound the video a bit. We watched the video. We paused the video. We rewound the video a bit. And so on. Now, none of us were porn virgins, but this was in the days before the internet had "made it big", so to speak, and none of us had seen anything quite so... copious in our lives. He just keeps going... and going... and going.... He's like some kind of Duracell Bunny, only with semen. This is a man who was made for porn.
The first few films...
Peter North was born on the 11th May, 1957 as Alden Brown in Halifax, Nova Scotia (that's in Canada by the way, for those not up on their geography.) He's 5'11", 185lbs, Caucasian, with brown eyes and dark hair... and while I'm on the subject, about that hair. He always has perfectly coiffured hair, and his female co-stars are not allowed to touch the hair. I digress. He made his first pornographic film, 'Euromen' in 1982 aged 26 under the pseudonym 'Matt Ramsey'; at the time he was attempting to raise funds to pay back a large amount of debt that he had accrued. Now, it may not be hugely obvious from the title, but 'Euromen' is actually a gay-porn movie. That's right; Peter North was once gay-for-pay. He actually made several gay movies, acting in both active (top) and passive (bottom) roles, but the one the scene he's remembered for is when he took one for the team off of Rick Donovan in 'The Bigger the Better' (1984); a not unimpressive feat.
His talent for the job was soon noticed and he was able to move over to the straight-porn industry; he's never looked back. For a long time he denied that he'd ever done any gay movies; some may say that this is because he's ashamed of his past, but I don't think this is really true. I think that there are two reasons why he would deny his introduction to the porn industry. The first is that straight porn seems to consist of penises being shoved in a whole lot of places, but very obviously female places. Peter North is a very popular male actor, and it's the way of the world that he'd lose the admiration of a large proportion of his heterosexual male fan base if he was to openly and willingly admit to his gay roles, no matter how long ago in the distant past. In later years, he has admitted to his initial introduction to the industry, but always makes it clear that he has never considered himself to be homosexual; it was just a way to pay the bills. "It was not a part of my sexuality at all. I was only able to do it because of my strong mind and my physical ability to have control over my own body." On his official website, he claims to have entered into the porn industry in 1984, which was when he started filming straight-only porn films. At the end of the day, he's a product, and he has an image to sell; can you blame the guy for being reticent on the matter? As for the second reason... Remember that these movies were made back in the early eighties – the time when HIV was beginning to spread, silently, through the gay community. In the nineties, many female porn actors would refuse to work with males actors who had been known to do bisexual work.
A prolific career
Since those early days, he hasn't looked back. His career has spanned over three decades now, and he's seen a lot of changes to the industry in his time; not least the move away from an attempt at acting (with a script and everything!) before the sex starts. Now they're banging away before you've even settled down with your popcorn. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, he also lived through the eighties and nineties where AIDS ripped through the porn acting community; John Holmes being just one example of the many who were lost to the virus.
He's credited as a performer in over 1,600 films, and while a lot of those will be compilations, that's still going to equal an impressive number of individual movies made. He's also began directing and producing movies in 1997. He has three series that he directs and occasionally produces: 'North Pole'; 'Anal Addicts'; and 'Deep Throat This'.
He has won many awards throughout his career, and has been made a member of both the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and the Adult Video News (AVN) Hall of Fames. He has also made a shed-load of dough out of it, and lives in style and comfort in Orange County, California.
What makes a porn star?
What indeed. Well, like I said, this is a man who was made for porn. First and foremost, there is his gift for producing copious amounts of ejaculate. It gets to the point where you suspect camera trickery, but many of his female co-stars have testified that what you are seeing is real; yes, that man did just spend 20 seconds ejaculating. I came across this website a couple of weeks ago while researching, and I felt vindicated at long last that it wasn't just me that found Peter North to be fascinating in a non-sexual way. He's previously stated that he's always produced that amount of semen, but he didn't realise that it was well above normal until he started working in the porn industry. However, in a recent turnaround, he claims that his copious ejaculate is actually due to a supplement that he takes. Now, before you take that seriously, you should take a look at the supplements' packaging and see whose name is on there... yeah. He has a financial incentive to claim that it's all down to the pills. I'm of the personal opinion that he's always been blessed in this particular department, if only because this supplement probably wasn't around when he first started working 23 years ago. Dude's a freak of nature, and we love him for it.
Of course, that's not the only thing he's got going for him in the male porn star stakes. The size of his penis is greatly disputed (take a look at the Wiki discussion page if you don't believe me), but is generally agreed to be around 8.5" in length and 6" in girth. I know that the porn industry can't help but beef up the numbers a little bit, but even then, he still has an impressively large member. With regard to his other porn credentials, he has chiselled good looks and a rock-hard (excuse the pun) body that is of course is also helped by the fact that he spends a large amount of time working out in the gym.
And of course nowadays a good porn star just isn't a porn star unless they have their own website where... you guessed it, you can watch their porn films. PeterNorth.com, if you're the type to like that kind of thing, is relatively good value for money; for a monthly subscription, you can download and watch any of his films, plus any other films of other stars on the BrainPass Network, such as Lexington Steele. Don't know the full details of it myself, and I'm not being paid to advertise so if you want to know more and have no fear of pop-ups, it's best to go take a look at the site yourself. Don't forget to have a credit card with you. Oh, and being aged over 18 probably wouldn't hurt, neither.
Filmography
Hey, guess what wouldn't be helpful? That's right: a full list of his entire filmography. But a small selection of both gay / bisexual works and film series that he has regularly appeared in are:
Gay / Bisexual
Straight
A full filmography, if you really need to know, can be found here at the IMDb, which will provide a chronological filmography. The Internet Adult Film Database and Adult Film Database will also have filmographies, alphabetically, but remember to search under both 'Peter North' and 'Matt Ramsey' for those.