Adult film star. He appeared in more than 2,270 adult films and was one of the few members of that genre to gain mainstream notoriety and recognition. Born John Curtis Estes and raised in Ohio, he was brought up in a classic family of the 1950s and attended Sunday School regularly. His mother changed his last name from Estes to Holmes when she married Edgar Harvey Holmes. At age 12, he reportedly lost his virginity to one of his mother's friends, a 36-year-old woman who liked young boys. At 16, he ran away from home and lied about his age in order to join the Army. He served three years, then moved on to a series of odd jobs: selling shoes, selling furniture, door-to-door sales, and other small gigs to pay the bills. In 1970, he answered an ad for a male actor for an adult entertainment movie and became an instant success. Part of his success at that time was due to a shift in the adult film industry towards making films with some sort of plot and character development. At the height of his success, he would earn $3,000 a day and more than $500,000 a year. In the mid-1970s he became addicted to drugs, often running up a bill of $30,000 or more. As his addiction took more control over his life, he began stealing to support his habit, which also affected his film career, making him less reliable as an actor. At one point, he robbed the Hollywood home of Eddie Nash, a nightclub owner and drug supplier, stealing over $250,000 in cash, jewelry, and drugs. A few months later, Nash is suspected (but never went to trial) of arranging the murder of the people who robbed his house, and four persons were brutally murdered (the Laurel Canyon murders- also called "The Four on the Floor" murders). The boyfriend of one of the murdered victims accused John Holmes of the robbery that led to the murders, After a lengthy jail term that led up to the trial, he was found innocent on June 26, 1982. He was, however, jailed for an additional 111 days for contempt of court for not cooperating and talking to the police. The result of incarceration for almost a year detoxified him and he began to renew his film career. However, in the summer of 1985, he discovered he had contracted AIDS. Unable to obtain work, he died of the disease penniless at age 43 in 1988. One writer called him "the Elvis Presley of Porn." The 1997 movie "Boogie Nights" was based on his life.