Old school adult film legend Vanessa Del Rio put a hurting on Bernie Mac while filming their hilarious sex scene for the wild, grown-up comedy Soul Men.
Fit and fierce at age 56, Del Rio retains all the fire that made her an X-rated superstar back in the pre-video, Boogie Nights era of porn (when dudes still watched “skin flicks” in movie theaters).
Soul Men co-star Samuel L. Jackson remembers Bernie pulling him aside on the set.
“He was like, ‘Man, she ’bout to kill me!’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘She’s jumping up and down and she’s just like buck wild over there!'”
Del Rio bursts out laughing when she’s told that story. If she frightened Mac with her unbridled freakiness she didn’t realize it. What she remembers most about her day on the Soul Men set is that Bernie Mac was a kind and considerate gentleman who spoke lovingly about his family and kept her laughing continuously.
“He was talking about his kids and about his dog and he just came across as such a wonderful, warm person,” Del Rio remembers. “We laughed a lot (and) I think laughter is very sexy!”
Her playful attitude toward sex defined Vanessa Del Rio’s onscreen persona back in the 1970s and early ’80s. She was renowned for having zero inhibitions on camera and for really enjoying her work. Samuel L. Jackson dug Del Rio’s movies when he was in college because “she was the first porn star who acted like she really enjoyed sex!” Del Rio takes that as a huge compliment.
“We were truly having a good time because we were expressing ourselves,” she says. “It was the ’70s sexual revolution. There was a lot of freedom then, a lot of free thinking .Back then (pornography) was something you did to have fun and to rebel.”
Del Rio retired from hardcore work in 1986 but she never fully abandoned the adult entertainment industry. Today she thrives on the Internet, personally managing a web site (www.vanessadelrio.com) where she performs naughty cam shows and hawks sexy merchandise including her memoir, a racy coffee table book with the deliberately ironic title, 50 Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior.
“That title is me being sort of tongue in cheek and coy … But by today’s standards I was just slightly slutty!” the pioneer pornista laughs.
Three decades after storming the adult movie scene, Vanessa Del Rio is in Energizer bunny mode and she isn’t even thinking about slowing down — ever.
“I always said that when it’s my turn to go into a retirement home just give me my drugs, put me in a wheelchair and point me towards the men!” Del Rio declares with a saucy laugh.