This year he’s added to his awards tally with an XBIZ Awards nomination and a few Grabby Awards nods. We spoke to him soon after he swept the 2009 GAYVN Awards, winning four, including Best Actor for Raging Stallion’s cowboy epic “To the Last Man.”
“I’m shocked that I won so many awards. I never came into this business with the intent of winning anything,” he said. “I came into this business to have fun and sleep with hot men.”
Although he’s pleased with the recognition, Sinz said the kudos wouldn’t otherwise affect how he goes about his job. “I’m going to just continue to work hard and have fun and do my dirty little thing that I do,” he quipped.
Following a stint in the armed forces, including time served in Iraq, Sinz wound up back home having to earn money and get back to the business of civilian life. He landed work as a fashion model and quickly drew the attention of the skin trade.
“I started to get approached by little studios to do solos,” he recalls. He took the plunge — and found he loved it.
Sinz began making friends and co-founded the straight pro/am site Hole and a Heartbeat. It was among the first porn purveyors to shoot hetero content with a focus on straight men — specifically, men like Sinz with a punk aesthetic and lots of tattoos.
“I think the appeal for me to get into porn was the sex and exhibitionism. I love sex. Male, female, I don’t care who it’s with,” he says. “And once I opened up my sexuality I couldn’t turn it off.”
Sinz walked away from Hole and a Heartbeat for a time to give himself the opportunity to stretch his wings, although he recently returned to buy out one of the original founders and relaunch the studio.
In the meantime, however, he partnered with Raging Stallion and a superstar was born. Sinz is aware of the opprobrium leveled at male performers that cross between straight and gay adult production — the gays are generally more accommodating about fluid sexuality than their hetero counterparts — and shrugs it off.
“I started in the gay side of the industry and actually crossed over to the straight side,” he said. “I just do what’s fun.”
The fact that he owns a straight adult studio means he does not have to rely on other producers for work. “I can do a straight project if it sounds like fun because I own a straight studio. But I don’t look at it as there being a great divide between straight and gay; I look at it as being a great ignorance. People like to pigeonhole models, which is to be expected.”
He believes those attitudes are quickly changing, thanks in large part to rapidly developing technology that allows performers to take the initiative and explore without the encumbrance of a large studio.
“You see a lot more performers operating in all markets these days, which is a good thing. I don’t like being tied down to boundaries or have limited options in what I want to do,” he says.
“I kind of want to put out there to the world that sexuality doesn’t need labels because sexuality is so varied from person to person, and no matter what you are you don’t have to be ashamed of what you are. If people want to try and pigeonhole you, just push on and make your own way and be proud of what you do.”
Visit Ricky Sinz online at RagingStallion.com and HoleAndAHeartbeat.com. He blogs at RickySinzXXX. blogspot.com.
