Ron Hightower

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Ron Hightower is an African American director who began his career as a pornographic actor.

Career

Born on 25 January 1966, Hightower entered the adult entertainment industry in his native New York shortly after working as an exotic dancer in the early 1990s. His good looks and muscular physique soon caught the eye of West Coast studio executives who recognized his potential as a top sex star, and they wasted no time in tempting him with better and more prominent roles. Arriving at the San Fernando Valley-based porn scene at a time when there were very few black men in the business who were actual celebrities (and when most interracial movies consisted of showing caucasian men having sex with African American women), Hightower rapidly gained popularity as a natural born performer who always pleased his female co-stars, and his early appearances in productions like White Men Can't Hump and the Dark Alleys series (both 1992) were well received by many fans of black themed and interracial erotica. He also displayed much talent as a hard-working director early on in his career and began directing his first of many movies almost immediately after he had begun performing, starting with Dark Alleys 8 (also 1992).

Hightower himself often made public his frustration with what he felt were stereotypical depictions of black men in pornography, and at the risk of jeopardizing his career he would take the opportunity during interviews to expose the restrictions that were placed by studio heads at the time on black actors whose female partners were white. Like his contemporary and friendly rival, Sean Michaels, he worked hard to eliminate negative stereotypes of African Americans in the business and also to break new grounds for them.

In 1996 he retired from performing sex in front of the cameras to became a full-time adult film director, later to pursue work for mainstream productions.

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