Bill Margold
Career
William Margold worked as a pornographic film actor and director from the 1970s before becoming the industry’s most prominent internal advocate. He was a founding member of the X-Rated Critics Organization in 1984 and later served as its historian until 2006; the organisation inducted him into its own Hall of Fame in 1989, in its "Film Pioneers" category. He founded the PAW Foundation, described as the industry’s charity for performer welfare, and served as a director of the Free Speech Coalition. He pushed for state-level reform raising the legal performing age from 18 to 21 and remained a frequent commentator until his death from a heart attack in 2017, while hosting a radio show.
Signature: Helped build two pieces of the industry’s own governance infrastructure — its award body and its performer-welfare charity — rather than simply working inside a studio system built by someone else.
Index score — The Pornstar Ranked Performer Index v3.0
Scores are normalised within a single ranking's field, so this breakdown is Bill Margold's placement inside The Best American Pornstars, Ranked by Industry Impact — the largest field she appears in. Her rank on each of the other 1 ranking below was computed against that ranking's own field and is not the same measurement.
Full award record2 entries
- —AVN — Hall of Fame
- 1989XRCO — Hall of Fame
Beyond performing
- Founding member, X-Rated Critics Organization (1984)
- Founder, PAW Foundation
- Director, Free Speech Coalition
Mainstream credits
- After Porn Ends (2012)
- Porndemic (2018, posthumous)
Official links
No official accounts confirmed. We only list handles we have verified on an authoritative page — a guessed handle in this industry usually belongs to an impersonator.
Appears in
Also ranked on
Ranked alongside
Sources and verification2 sources
- Exact AVN Hall of Fame induction year
- Exact adult-film debut year
- PAW Foundation founding year
