Former porn star Harry Reems, who co-starred in the 1972 movie Deep Throat, died on Tuesday at the age 65.
Reems spent nearly a decade enjoying a successful career in the adult film industry but alcohol addiction brought him to his knees. A religious conversion was the catalyst for change and since the late 1980s he had worked in Salt Lake City as a real estate agent.
His wife, Jeanne Sterrett, reported his death on Wednesday. He had been suffering from multiple medical issues, including pancreatic cancer.
Reems played the male lead in Deep Throat, a pop culture phenomenon that brought pornography to mainstream audiences.
In the 70s film, he played a witty physician alongside the well-known Linda Lovelace.
The movie, an unlikely box-office sensation, became a touchstone for obscenity laws and a target for anti-smut activists.

In 1976, Reems was convicted of obscenity for his role in the film and faced a potential five-year prison term. Celebrities including Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty came to Reems' defense, and the conviction was overturned.
The film later served as the nickname for a source that helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigate the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

After Deep Throat, he went on to star in dozens of adult films, including The Devil in Miss Jones.
'He hated, at the end, doing porn,' Jeanne Reems said. 'It was all he could make money doing.'
At the 2005 premiere of a documentary about Deep Throat at the Sundance Film Festival, Reems told The Associated Press that the film was the first to 'drop any pretense that it had educational value.'
'There was no socially redeeming value, and so the word of mouth went out from people who saw it saying "This is just a comedy. It's great. You've got to see this,"'Reems said.
When the original male lead didn't work out, Reems, the lighting director, stepped in. He played a doctor helping a patient, played by Linda Lovelace, with a sexually sensitive area at the back of her throat.

Reems was born in in New York in 1947 as Herbert Streicher. He served in the U.S. Marines before he ended up in the entertainment industry in the 1970s.
He aspired to become a serious actor but was thrown in front of the camera while working on the production crew for Deep Throat.
Reems left the porn industry and moved to Park City, Utah, in the 1980s, where he underwent an alcohol treatment program and worked as a real estate agent.
Over the years, Reems remained in limited contact with Lovelace, who became an anti-porn advocate and later died in 2002 due to car crash injuries.
In 1989, a judge placed Reems on five years' probation and ordered him to pay back taxes after pleading guilty to failing to pay income tax on $35,000 in movie earnings. The court also ordered Reems to undergo an alcohol detoxification program and undergo psychological counseling.
In a 2006 interview with the Deseret News, Reems described his battles with alcohol and how his life transformed after he became sober.
'I literally should be dead. I know a lot of people who drank a lot less than me, and they are dead,' Reems said. 'God has left me on this Earth for a reason, and I think it's to save lives.'

He reflected on the life changing event in 1989 that inspired him to break free from the chains of addiction - a gracious police officer that encouraged him in his alcohol treatment.
'That police officer treated me with dignity and respect. He told me I was a worthwhile human being and I have a purpose here. Maybe that purpose was to be of service to others with the same disease.'
During his rehabilitation he turned to faith.
'If I didn’t put God in my life, I’d be dead now,' he said in an interview in 2007.
He married Jeanne in 1990, the first and only marriage for both.
'He was very romantic and a great husband,' she said.
Family friend Don Schenk, who knew Reems for 20 years, described him as a 'nice guy,' a great salesman and an avid golfer and skier.
'I met him long after he left the adult film industry. The adult film industry basically destroyed him,' Schenk said. 'He would never talk about the salacious stuff - we always talked about how he was a survivor.'
Reems struggled with multiple health problems in his final years and was hospitalized on March 5. His health problems kept him at home in recent years and he went through chemotherapy earlier this year for early stage pancreatic cancer.
'His last year or so was really, really hard,' Jeanne Reems said.
Besides his wife, Reems is survived a brother. He had no children.