Rod Fontana
American pornographic film director & actor (born 1952)
Ronald Boyer (born September 18, 1952), commonly known by the stage name Rod Fontana, is a pornographic actor and director. In 2005, he was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. He was reported to have retired from the adult film industry in 2007 to pursue religious interests, but his career continued the next year.
01Early life
Boyer was raised as a Southern Baptist in Central, South Carolina, where he was also born. He preached when in his teens before studying history and religion at college.
02Career
Boyer left college early to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Vietnam War. On his return in 1975, he had expected to join the NYPD, but the job offer was withdrawn. A friend who was an actor suggested pornography, and Boyer filmed his first scene in the summer of 1976. He left pornography during the 1980s to rejoin the U.S. military, serving as an E-4 specialist. He returned to pornography in the 1990s. Louis Theroux watched a porn shoot including Fontana for his 2005 book "The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures", calling him an "older guy, jolly, manic, overweight".
The New York Times reported that Fontana retired from pornography in January 2007 and became a registered private investigator and interested in the Episcopal Church. However, he appeared in and directed adult films for Hustler Video from the following year and said to AVN that the newspaper had misrepresented him.
03Personal life
Fontana is married to former pornographic actress Liza Harper. Their daughter Diana, born in 2002, nearly died of a staph infection in 2003. This incident eventually led the couple to become more religious.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Rod Fontana”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Rod Fontana.jpg by Liza Harper, Rod Fontana adjusted.jpg: Lukeisback.com (permission here) *derivative work: 1990Rebecca, CC BY-SA 2.5
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