BY VINCENT LAMBERT
Blue Blake answers the door to his sublet wearing a towel and a smile. He’s freshly showered after a grueling day spent rehearsing for his New York stage debut in the hit play Making Porn. With his multiple tattoos blazing, Blake pads around barefoot, spooning Häagen-Dazs sorbet and explaining why he decided to leave sunny Los Angeles to spend a winter working off-Broadway in New York.
At age 33, Blake qualifies as a veteran actor onscreen, but it wasn’t until Making Porn writer/director Ronnie Larsen approached him on a film set that he thought about working onstage. “Ronnie thought I could act and asked me to do the play in L.A.,” Blake says. “I had such a good time that I wanted to do it in New York. I enjoy the discipline and challenge of working onstage. It’s a sacrifice being here, but what doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger.”
If you’ve only seen photos of this philosophical porn stud, you’d never guess that he speaks with a strong British accent. But Blake was born and raised in Nottingham, England. His mother was a model, and his father owned a gay club. He says that he was sure of his sexual orientation early on. “My uncle used to play for a British football team,” Blake recalls. “One time when I was about six years old, we went into the changing room and all the football players were naked. I remember they had these big fat dicks, and I wanted to put their dicks in my mouth! I was always very comfortable with my sexuality.”
At 18, Blake joined the Marines with his brother, Gage. After a 10-year stint and receiving a degree in English literature, he was unsure of his future. Blake had always worked out and in 1990 won the Mr. Drummer United Kingdom contest. After traveling to San Francisco to compete in the world finals, he began thinking of new career options.
“The porn business had always fascinated me,” he says. “I wanted to know more about it. In the gym, people would always ask my brother and me, ‘Want to do a porno movie?’ and we’d ask, ‘How much will you pay?’ We weren’t especially interested in the social ramifications of it. And it wasn’t the prospect of sex, because I always got a lot of sex anyway. It was the money that motivated me.”
So, in 1994, he and Gage starred in The Blade Twins: Raw and Uncut for director Jim French. (The brothers aren’t actually twins; Gage is one year older, but Blake says they looked enough alike to pass as twins.) Blake calls the film a “muscle jerk-off movie where I suck my brother’s dick. It turned into this underground hit. The studio made a fortune.” Then he worked on a Tom of Finland movie called The Wild Ones with his boyfriend at the time, Bull Stanton.
Although Blake went on to appear in Lube Job, Cockfight and more than 30 other films, he remains hesitant to label himself a porn star. “I don’t believe that there really is such a thing,” he says. “It’s a dichotomy. There are so many porn movies around and so many people who perform in them. There are porn performers, but very few porn stars.” He is also reluctant to endorse the business as a whole. “This is an industry that eats its young. I thought it was going to be a really cool industry, but ultimately I was wrong. It’s incredibly exploitative of people who are too young and naive to be exploited. It can be incredibly destructive.”
Blake says he’s avoided many of the pitfalls of the adult film industry because he didn’t start working until he was 30. Although his onscreen persona is anything but young and naive, Blake sees himself as “a little boy trapped in a big body. That’s why I enjoy acting, because I get to play these inhuman psychotic monsters, which is the complete opposite of what I’m like in real life. It’s interesting to delve into that side of yourself. It’s like therapy.”
When he finishes his run in Making Porn, Blake hints that acting in porn movies may not be part of his future. One possible explanation for this is the current man in his life. Blake has been involved for the past year with a California businessman who is 18 years his senior. “Porn horrifies my boyfriend, but I still do it to torment him,” he says with a laugh. “Actually, I’m madly in love with him, and I would give it up for him. He pampers me terribly. I like being spoiled and he likes to spoil me, so we have the perfect relationship.”
When asked whether he’s concerned that his imminent departure from film will disappoint his many fans, Blake answers, “People won’t even know I’m gone. That’s the nature of porn. I understand that now. When I first started, I wanted to leave behind something that I could be remembered for—like my movies for Tom of Finland and Colt—but it got out of hand. I did too many cheesy movies.” He smiles and heaves a contented sigh. “Now I’m ready to settle down—have a husband, a home and raise puppies. My days of wildness are over. I’ve crammed so much into my 33 years. Now it’s time to sit back and let the world go by.”
Reprinted from HX magazine (1996)
