Part 7: 1985-1993

Seka made her return to the film industry with Blonde Heat (1985). It was a porn remake of the classic movie The Maltese Falcon, although this time the story centred round a Maltese dildo. Seka only appeared in one scene with John Leslie, but the film was well made and funny. By now her peroxide hair was cropped short, but even in her early thirties her figure looked good. She soon followed this up with a cameo appearance in Beyond Desire (1986) early the following year. It was basically a sequel to Blonde Heat, although not as good. This time she took part in a mediocre threesome with Nina Hartley and Francois Papillon. The scene wasn’t very erotic, but Seka still looked great and her name on the box-cover meant increased sales.

“Soon, I decided to produce my own movie. I wrote, starred in, directed, and edited one of my best – Careful, He May Be Watching (1987). I played both the redhead and the blonde.” Despite now being older than the average porn actress, at 32 she still looked as sexy and hot as she did during the peak of her career in 1980.

“Being a woman, I wanted to make the film a little more romantic than standard adult fare, but for commercial purposes I realised I had to appeal to the hardcore audience and make it hot as well.” Although Careful, He May Be Watching is considered a ‘couples’ movie, it was well received by the public and the industry.

“Finally, finally, I won an adult film industry award for Best Film. I had worked very hard on the project and proudly accepted what was certainly my due as The Platinum Princess!”

Despite being a success though, the experience of making the movie proved to be a bitter one. “I never saw a dime because I kept getting told it didn’t make any money. Although I knew that was bull, I didn’t have the means to prove it. They made money on it for over twenty years. I was just plain ripped off. Screwed if you will, on camera and off.”

Seka in Careful, He May Be Watching

Following the release of Careful, He May Be Watching, Seka’s life took a dramatic turn. “I ended up running amok. I didn’t give a fuck about a whole lot of anything or anyone… I went clubbing. Drinking. Drugging. I had partied before, but now I was drinking heavily and doing a lot of cocaine. Sometimes I’d stay up for four or five days straight partying… I couldn’t handle a serious relationship. Instead, I had fuck buddies. Whoever was convenient at the moment… I don’t remember most of their names… What made me decide to stop, though, was my life was out of control, especially my business life, which was in trouble.”

According to Seka, “I am obviously a woman who loves sex. I can’t tell you that I got off every time I did a film, but my attitude was always, ‘Well screw this - if I’m going to do this, I might as well have a good time.’ I enjoyed it, even if I didn’t always have orgasms. This also has been my prevailing attitude toward romance – it’s pleasurable, but not every relationship needs to wind up at the little chapel in Vegas. Oh, there had been a lover here, a marriage there, but romance was not the order of my personal day. Sex was my business, yes, but romance was for other people. Then it struck - as it always does when you least expect it. While on vacation in St. Martin I met my prince… He worked hard, he made very, very good money, he liked to play, he didn’t question me. If there was anything I wanted, he gave it to me. Conversely, if there was anything he wanted - I gave it to him. Sex was wonderful and we laughed and talked a lot. It was a great balance. The man had just one request for me - that I always come home to him. I always did. It may have been at three or four in the morning, but home to the man I came. Then he died. I won’t go into details; suffice it to say that it was a difficult time.” Seka's short-lived marriage had been to Chicago businessman William Montgomery III. Following his death she remained in Chicago, but kept her distance from possible future serious relationships.

By the early 1990’s Seka's mail-order business was fading, and she admitted to being “tired of competing with the younger strippers.” In 1993 she made what became her final porn film, entitled American Garter. The film received a lot of exposure both in the adult industry and the mainstream media. The end result, however, was a massive disappointment. American Garter was a well-made movie, but it lacked eroticism. More importantly, Seka had lost the curvaceous figure that had made her famous.

Although only 39 at the time, Seka, unlike other porn stars such as Annette Haven, Nina Hartley or Ginger Lynn, had been unable to retain her looks. No matter how well a movie is made, the porn industry is based on how good the actress looks on film. Not only did Seka now look overweight, but she also lacked any sense of enthusiasm when it came to on-screen sex. She only appeared in two scenes throughout the entire film, neither of which lit up the screen. She would later admit “The plain fact was that I had reached a plateau that terrifies every woman in the film business, inside or outside porn: I was 40! I have to admit it - I slept a great deal during this period, lost some of my youthful shape. I had no interest in how I looked. Can it be any plainer that I had sunk into a funk? I was doing drugs at the time, not on set, but it was in my life. After I was done, it was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do this anymore. Goodbye. Let’s find the next new thing to play with.”

Seka became involved in radio talk shows in the mid 1990s and although she kept up with some of what was going on in the adult business, she admited that the industry had changed enormously since her heyday.

“There’s no individuality anymore. A lot of the girls look like they come out of cookie cutters. All the guys look the same and there’s no personality. All the girls have big boobs, are blonde, have a little waist and butt, and tattoos… You watch one, you have watched them all.”

She made a couple of hardcore clips in 2007 but has not made a porn film since American Garter and is unlikely to do so. “I walked away from doing films because I didn’t want to disgust people by taking my clothes off in front of a camera and having sex at fifty-five! I’m not going to do that to my fans. I mean, my God, they’ve been supportive of me all these years, why should I devastate them? I don’t feel bad about the way I look, but it’s just not something I want to do anymore. When I was 25 and 30 years old, when I had sex, there were things that didn’t move. I’m not ashamed of the way I look now, but a lot of things move and when things start moving, it doesn’t look all that great!”

Seka remains one of the iconic stars of porn's Golden Age. In a 2012 interview she said: “I got an email the other day from a kid... I call him a kid, he's 22 years old, a pre-law student from Mississippi, and he's head-over-heels for me, and I'm 58. And he goes, 'I don't care, I love you, I've always loved you and I just think you're wonderful,' and yada yada yada and you know, my fans go from 18 to 90. So I've got three generations of men that I've raised, so to speak.”