Max Hardcore dead at age 66: Controversial porn star Paul Little who was jailed for his films dies after health battle
CONTROVERSIAL porn star Max Hardcore who was once jailed for his adult films has died at age 66.
The actor, whose real name was Paul Little, died on Monday from septic shock and pneumonia after a cancer battle, his business partner said.
Little, who was known for his extreme and degrading adult film scenes, had been receiving radioactive iodine treatment following a thyroid cancer diagnosis in March 2022.
“He was almost at the finish line for the chemotherapy,” Little’s long-time office manager and business partner Paul Munoz said.
“He went in and did the surgery and he didn’t want to spend the weekend at the hospital, so he came back home and that’s when things went south for him.
“His wind tunnel ruptured and air started going into his neck and his neck started swelling up.”
Little was put on a ventilator at one point and spent a month in the hospital before things appeared to start improving in February.
“And then this past Friday, he suffered some kind of infection in his throat and downstairs,” Munoz said.
“This infection wiped him out because his immune system had not recovered from the last time in December.”
Little was still making efforts in the adult entertainment industry up until he was diagnosed with cancer.
He had a nearly three-decade long career with more than 500 performing credits and 360 credits as a director.
His movies were often slammed for their extreme and degrading nature.
The films landed him in legal trouble in May 2007, when he and his production company Max World Entertainment were indicted by a grand jury in Tampa, Florida, on charges of distributing obscene material through the U.S. mail and internet.
He was sentenced to 46 months in prison in 2008, however, he had supporters who believed that the charges were unjust.
“At the time, most journalists and bloggers saw Little as a victim – a man whose freedom of pornographic expression had been labeled criminal by the U.S. government,” Forbes’ Susannah Breslin wrote in 2011.
“Max did it his way. He walked the line and didn’t give a f**k if he fell off of it or not,” said Munoz.
“He knew he had a lot of people who didn’t like him.”
Still, many reviled Little for what they considered “abuse” in his films, as reported by Daily Mail.
Feminist Julie Bindel said that she celebrated Little’s death, tweeting: “I don’t believe in evil, but the feeling I got when I was once within hearing distance of this bastard was that I was in its presence.”
Other Twitter users shared their concerns over the material he produced in the thread, with one saying: “The world is a better place without him.”
Little is survived by his sister and two brothers.