Joey Stefano

Born to middle-class parents in Chester, Pennsylvania, on January 1, 1968, Nicholas Anthony Iacono had an older sister, Linda, and a younger sister, Tina. At age 15 he dropped out of high school -- at about the same time his father died -- and began to experiment with drugs as well as engage in "street hustling." In 1989, at the age of 21, he moved to Los Angeles and quickly became involved in the rapidly-expanding world of gay videos. Standing 5' 11" and weighing 165 pounds, his good looks and pleasing physique soon made him a porn star under the name "Joey Stefano." By some accounts he earned $100,000 in the year 1990, making as much as $1500 for a single sex scene. (Significantly, Iacono almost always played the "bottom" role in these scenes, making him unique in a genre filled with performers who would only play "tops.") He did not handle his finances well, however, and had no long-range plans to manage his career, usually being content to accept whatever was offered to him. Soon his career began to fade, though his drug habit continued, and late in 1990 he tested as HIV positive. Hoping to revive his fortunes, Iacono began to tour the country, dancing and stripping at gay nightclubs and offering himself as a paid "escort." Eventually he returned to L.A. where, on November 26, 1994, at the age of 26, he was found dead in a Hollywood Boulevard motel room, his system overloaded with a mixture of cocaine, morphine, heroin, and ketamine. Most consider his death the result of an accidental overdose. He is buried next to his father in Immaculate Heart Cemetery in Philadelphia. In 1996 Charles Isherwood published a biography of this gay icon titled "Wonder Bread and Ecstasy."