He was best friends with Jon Dough, with whom he entered the business at around the same time. In 2018 he announced on his Instagram page that he is in the process of authoring a memoir about his time in the business. He publicly announced in 2015 that he had left the industry, turning to Christianity. In 2011, he shot his last film in the pornography film industry, having broken down in tears as he left the set. He has since been inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. In the early 1990s, Spears left the adult industry for a time before later returning for financial reasons. Spears also played Captain Jim Quirk in the "Sex Trek" series, which was a sex-parody of Star Trek. The same year, he won the Adult Video News Best Actor Award for his performance in The Masseuse with Hyapatia Lee. Lost in Paradise, Dial a Sailor, Sexual Healer and Outback Assignment. In 1990, Spears and Tom Byron traveled to Australia and made the films Singles Holiday, Spears' first billing was as detective Hank Smith in The Case of the Sensuous Sinners, released in 1988. Initially, he kept his mother uninformed about his new profession. Still, he fielded and accepted more offers, which came in, he said, once producers noticed he had some acting experience. Spears said he felt conflicted after his first shoot, for which he earned $400.
With nothing more than a can of beans and a sack of potatoes in his cupboard, he called a month later, despite his concern that working in the adult entertainment industry could hurt his professional career later on. He said he turned to modeling when a make-up artist handed him her card and told him to dial the number if he ever felt like doing nude work.
In a 2016 interview, he said he was an aspiring actor who, after a few years in show business, fell on hard times due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. Spears was introduced to the industry in 1987 by Ona Zee. Prior to making adult films, Spears worked as an Chippendales dancer. In 2020, he announced that he was returning to the entertainment industry, though mostly doing voiceovers (such as his work in American Dad). Mind in the episode " In Country.Club", the fifth-season premiere of American Dad! In 2009, Spears provided the voice of a character called John Q. He also acted in commercials and in a one-week stint on Ryan's Hope in 1989, where he played a bartender. Ī year later, Spears starred, along with Georgina Spelvin and Linda Blair, in Bad Blood, a gothic thriller also known as A Woman Obsessed. In the 1988 comedy Sexpot he played the role of Damon the same year he appeared in the horror comedy Critters 2: The Main Course. Spears was seen in three mainstream films under the name Gregory Patrick. He landed small roles in the mainstream films Trading Places and Blow Out. Spears left Kankakee for California during the early 1980s, to pursue a career in acting.