Frank Bukkwyd attributes his adult-industry career to "an act of God"—specifically, the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Adult-movie production shut down to recover from the damage, and when shooting started up again writer Cash Markman enlisted Bukkwyd as a writing partner, creating "Babewatch," a parody series of the mainstream TV show Baywatch. This led to his first screen credit under the Bukkwyd name and his first of many AVN Award nominations. When Markman moved into directing in 1996, Bukkwyd joined him as a production assistant, and when an actor didn’t show up for a bartending part, Bukkwyd stepped in.

Bukkwyd says his career as a non-sex actor grew as he earned a reputation as the "non-sex guy who could handle all that story-telling dialogue other performers found so annoying to learn" and worked steadily in four to six plot-driven productions a month, playing put-upon bosses, imperious generals, snooty butlers and mysterious authority figures.

Writer/director Will Ryder told AVN, "Frank Bukkwyd is a must-have actor for all of my movies because he plays characters perfectly and adds life and stability to everything I write. He helps make my stories believable. Great actors make good writers shine."

"Frank Bukkwyd is an amazing addition to any script-driven movie," writer/director Brad Armstrong said. "He’s a brilliant actor with an extraordinary range of characters and accents in his repertoire. Whether the role is well worked out or loose and unspecific Frank can polish it, build on it and deliver a nomination worthy performance. Directors need only to say 'action' and let Frank bring the character to life."

He long enforced a personal rule that he would not perform in a scene with nudity ("One boob in a scene is enough") until one movie when Markman convinced him that the hard-boiled detective character he was playing would not be fazed by a woman sunbathing nude, and the detective would interrogate her as if nothing was out of the ordinary. "I remember a Jerry T scene where I was some kind of ersatz Nazi interrogating four totally naked women, or one for Cash where I was a French painter drunk on champagne painting the bodies of two naked models," Bukkwyd told AVN. "After a while I developed my working approach—if a scene would merit an R rating in mainstream, then fine, no matter how naked they were on the set—but once they started to focus on the naughty bits, I would step out so as to no longer share the frame."

Bukkwyd also worked as a dialogue coach for directors including Jerome Tanner and Shawn Ricks to help less-seasoned performers with their line readings.

Spellings of Bukkwyd's name vary—the name was coined by Markman reflecting his joking statement that "we're only doing this for the money" using three names for money: franc, buck, quid—and the number of his credits varies as well, with IAFD listing 135 and IMDb listing 180, and Bukkwyd himself saying the number could be even higher, "as much as double that [180]." Along with the acting credits is an impressive number of award nominations for non-sex roles and an equally impressive "perfect win record of absolutely zero, enabling me to maintain my rightful crown as the Susan Lucci of porn." Bukkwyd has been nominated again this year for his performance in "The Cursed XXX" from Adam & Eve Pictures.

Bukkwyd also created a one-man stage show, “What I Learned From Porn,“ offering behind-the-scenes tales of adult filmmaking, which has "delighted and excited audiences in Santa Monica, Hollywood, New York, and Missoula, Montana."