Candida Royalle

Candida Royalle (born Candice Marion Vadala; October 15, 1950 – September 7, 2015) was an American producer and director of couples-oriented pornography, pornographic actress, sex educator, and sex-positive feminist.

She was a member of the XRCO and the AVN Halls of Fame.

Royalle was born Candice Marion Vadala in New York City on October 15, 1950.

Trained in music, dance and art in New York City, she studied at the High School of Art and Design, Parsons School of Design and the City College of New York.

A five-track EP titled Candida Cosmica, a collaboration between Royalle and Patrick Cowley from the mid-1970s, was released in October 2016 by Dark Entries Records.

Royalle was a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, and a founding board member of Feminists for Free Expression.

After graduating from Parsons School of Design, she began performing with the avant-garde theater group The Cockettes and in 1975 played Divine's daughter in the play The Heartbreak of Psoriasis.

In 1975, she began her career as a pornographic performer, appearing in about 25 movies before retiring in 1980 with Blue Magic, which she also wrote.

Royalle quit as a performer because she got married, and was uncomfortable being sexual with other men.

Moreover, she had increasingly felt that her strongly feminist views were at odds with the male-centric manner in which traditional pornography was produced and that she had been working in, giving virtually no attention to the female perspective, and making no effort to appeal to female viewers.

During her acting career (1975–1980), Royalle performed in 25 traditional male-centred porn films, including Ball Game (1980) by Ann Perry, Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls, Hot Racquettes, Delicious, Fascination by Chuck Vincent, and finally Blue Magic (1980), which Royalle also wrote and her then-new husband Per Sjöstedt produced.

In the 1980s, Royalle was married to producer Per Sjöstedt; they separated in 1988.

The increasing availability of cable television and VCR around 1983 provided Royalle both with an incentive and opportunity to consider producing her own "feminist" pornography, aimed at women and couples who wanted to watch a different kind of porn from the privacy of their homes.

In early 1984, Royalle founded Femme Productions together with Lauren Neimi.

Their goal was making erotica based on female desire, as well as pornographic films aimed at helping couple therapy.

Her productions are aimed more at women and couples than at the standard pornographic audience of men, and have been praised by counselors and therapists for depicting healthy and realistic sexual activity.

Royalle stated that she tried to avoid "misogynous predictability", and depiction of sex in "...as grotesque and graphic [a way] as possible."

She also criticized the male-centredness of the typical pornographic film, in which scenes end when the male actor ejaculates.

Royalle's films are not "goal oriented" towards a final "cum shot"; instead, her films depict sexual activity within the broader context of women's emotional and social lives.

In 1989, she signed the Post Porn Modernist Manifesto.

She was featured in Maya Gallus's 1997 documentary film Erotica: A Journey Into Female Sexuality.

Royalle wrote regular columns for adult magazines High Society and Cheri.

She was also a public speaker, giving lectures at Smithsonian Institution, the World Congress on Sexology, and numerous universities and professional conferences.

In 2004, she authored the book How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do.

In May 2006, she announced that she was engaged to be married.

By 2013, Royalle had (jointly) written or directed 18 feminist porn films with Femme Productions since 1984, including:

She died in Mattituck, New York on September 7, 2015, aged 64, from ovarian cancer.

In 2019, Candice, a documentary about Royalle's life and finding out what happened to her mother who left her as a child, was screened at various documentary film festivals.

It was directed by Sheona McDonald and distributed by Mbur Indie Film Distribution.