Happy Birthday Melissa Hill

OK It’s a day late and there’s really no excuse for that because she shares a birthday with an American Icon, Elvis Presley.

I may have told the story before, sometimes at 58 and 15 years of this blog I repeat myself, but I also constantly get new readers so…

I was attending the CES show in Vegas, this was back when we were a part of CES, and a guy from San Fransisco was shopping new talent, the guys name was Dan Barros (RIP Dan) He had in tow, a gorgeous red haired girl named Melissa Hill, I shot her first scene, it was with Anna Malle (RIP Anna) and Tim Lake.  It was also Anna Malle’s first scene and her only scene prior to her breast implants.

Melissa came to Atlanta where I shot her twice more in vignette scenes for my multi AVN Award winning series  “Mike South’s Southern Belles”, Melissa, being from Texas qualified as “southern”.  Melissa was also the first girl from California that I shot and I did something that I knew was a no no, I got a crush on her.  It wasn’t because she was the first pretty girl I had sex with or anything, it was because she was so feminine, so smart and extraordinarily talented.  No matter what the set up was, or how lame, Melissa became the character, she was a natural born method actress.  I never let the crush get in the way, Melissa and I became friends and even attended shows together and stayed in the same hotel rooms quite often.

When she finally won her AVN Award for Best Actress in a Film, something that was past due in many minds, not just my own, I was proud of my friend.  By then Melissa worked pretty much exclusively for Vivid, even though she wasn’t an official Vivid Girl.

The thing about Melissa was that she was a dichotomy, in person and not in character she was very prim and proper, she didn’t use profanity and she had (and presumably still has) a style and grace that is generally NOT associated with girls in porn. But when she flipped the switch and became whatever character she was to play the only vestige of the real person was the packaging.  In reality I suspect she is one of very, vey few girls in porn ever that might have had a shot at a real acting career in mainstream.

Among her best performances in my book was the movie “Bad Wives” Dyanna Lauren won best actress for that movie but it was really Melissa that stole the show with a part that I doubt anyone else could have pulled off believably.

Happy Birthday Melissa!