PORN VALLEY—According to news reports, actress Erica Boyer was killed on New Year's Eve in a traffic accident near her home in Panama City Beach, Florida, where she had been living since her retirement from the adult industry in 1994. She was 53 years old, and is reportedly survived by one son.
The Panama City News-Herald has reported that Amanda Jensen, Boyer's real name, was traveling south on Front Beach Road (U.S. Highway 98) near Second Street, and while attempting to cross Front Beach Road was struck by a 2001 four-door Hyundai being driven by an off-duty officer in the Florida Highway Patrol, Gregory Lowe of Fort Walton Beach. She was killed instantly. The accident occurred at 8:20 p.m. on New Year's Eve, and is currently under investigation by the Highway Patrol.
According to the Internet Adult Film Database, Boyer began her XXX career in a little-seen 1974 movie, Cowgirls In Chains, but waited another five years before fully taking the plunge into adult acting. From that point, she worked regularly for another 25 years, during which period she racked up the vast majority of her 184 features. However, she did come out of retirement briefly in the early 2000s.
"The only time I ever worked with Erica was when she found out I was making a movie with Marilyn [Chambers]," recalled actress/director Veronica Hart. "She flipped; she said, 'I have to do a scene with her.' It's something she'd wanted to do all her life, and she basically came out of retirement to do a scene with Marilyn, because she just loved her so much."
The movie was Dark Chambers, the second of a trio of movies Chambers did for VCA beginning in 1999, and Boyer's final on-camera appearance.
"She was just so nice and so sweet," Hart continued. "She was living in Florida. Everybody had only the nicest things to say about her. She was just a gem to work with, and she was so thrilled to work with Marilyn, and I was so happy to be able to put them together."
Boyer was known primarily for her girl/girl scenes, and reportedly, that was her preference off-camera as well.
Asked in a 1989 interview whether there were any real lesbians in the adult industry, bisexual actress Nina Hartley replied, "There used to be two: Erica Boyer and Barbara Dare. While for many years they had lesbian relationships off camera for emotional support and identified themselves as lesbians, each recently got married to a man. Obviously, they were basically bisexual and just hadn't found the right man yet. They still enjoy sex with women very much, and there will always be that love and affection for women. But at this point in time, they have bonded with a man."
Indeed, at the first X-Rated Critics' Organization (XRCO) Awards show, Boyer was given the "Lascivious Lesbian" award for her performance with Robin Everett in Bob Chinn's Body Girls. VCA's Every Woman Has A Fantasy also won that year for "Most Erotic Film of the Year," in which Boyer had essayed a solo, a girl/girl and a threeway scene for the film.
But it appears that Boyer's sexuality—and in fact, her life—was more complicated than that.
"She was a wonderful, wonderful, crazy, incredible woman," recalled director F.J. Lincoln. "I don't ever think I've heard her use a cross word against anybody. I know everybody's going to tell you she wasn't reliable, and that part is true: You would hire her and then think of an alternate because she wouldn't always come to work ... but when she did, she was incredible, and her and I almost ran away in Europe. We worked in italy and then we went to Germany, and we had money, and she said, 'Fuck it, let's not go home; let's just roam Europe till we run out of money,' and I guess if I'd been ten years younger, I would have said, 'Yeah.'"
"She was primarily a lesbian," he continued, "but when I first met Brad Armstrong, it was at Erica's. She invited me onto her patio and Brad was there. He was her latest boyfriend."
Boyer was also a free spirit when it came to psychedelics.
"We were all doing mushrooms once," Lincoln remembered, "and she had this thing, when she would do mushrooms, she would change her clothes like ten times during the night, and her makeup too. Our apartments were adjacent, on top of a bar in Ventura, and all of a sudden we heard her scream, and we went running into the other apartment to see what was wrong, and she was standing there crying and saying, 'I shrunk! I shrunk!' What she had done is put on this giant sweatshirt which made her arms where the elbows go and the bottom of it went almost to her feet—and it was a gag, a joke, but that was the kind of person she was."
"She was absolutely hilarious, and sexual, too," he continued. "We were staying in Germany in this old castle, and it was when Interview With The Vampire had just come out, the book, and all day, she was reading me little excerpts, especially the excerpts where the little girl vampire, her mind grows, she gets older but her body stays the same, and she starts seducing her victims."
"That night, I went upstairs to my little pointy-roof bedroom," he continued, "and I got in bed, ready to go to sleep, and there's a knock on the door, and she's standing there in this little cotton nightgown with pigtails, holding a teddy bear, and she says to me, 'I'm really afraid and I can't sleep; can I say in here with you?' And I said, 'Sure, why not?' And she got in the bed and she turned herself so all I could see was her beautiful neck, and I became a vampire. We started to get together, and I realized how incredibly inventive this woman was, and she was just so much fun to be with. This is really a loss."
Besides her acting talents, Boyer is also credited with being the executive producer for VCA's The New Barbarians 1 & 2 in 1990. The movies were written by prominent screenwriter Rqven Touchstone.
Check back to AVN.com for updates as more details of her death become known.
A gallery of Erica Boyer images can be found here.
[Note: This article has been updated since its original publication.]
