That Rex is talking again about the subject he avoided for years, as if it were an exorcism, is because he plays a porn actor in Red Rocket, the new film by Sean Baker, who in Tangerine (2015) or The Florida Project (2017) portrayed the dreams and hopes of the lumpen who survive behind the neon lights of Las Vegas or Disneyland. Rex thus became the epitome of the star born at the dawn of a new era, who has a hidden past that catches him by surprise: a new era in which nothing that has ever been recorded, written or said can be forgotten. That resulted in four tapes with not exactly cryptic titles ( Young, Hard and Alone, for example, or Hot Sessions I, II and III) which, when Rex became a celebrity in the United States, were re-released a few years later and saw the light of day thanks to the internet.
Desperate to stay afloat, he answered an ad in a Los Angeles newspaper seeking models to pose nude. It started in 1993, when he was 19 years old and cleaning tables. Actor Simon Rex, 47, may be the last person in the history of Hollywood who believed he could shoot four porn movies, find fame and live in a world where this past wouldn’t come out.
