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CHATSWORTH, Calif. - AVN Hall of Fame performer Jon Dough passed away on Sunday, Monique Demoan, his wife of 12 years told AVN.com. Dough, whose real name was Chet Anuszek, was 43.

"I've been with Chet for 12 years. We have a four-year-old daughter," Demoan said. "We lived together. I found Chet yesterday. ... He did take his own life."

Demoan, who met Dough when she worked with him in Ed Powers' Dr. Butts 3, continued, "Chet was a very warm, loving person.

"We fell deeply in love. He treated me very well. He put me on a pedestal and gave me everything we need. I loved him being a big man, and being held in his arms. He made me feel very comfortable, very loved… He was everything to me. And I bear his only daughter.”

Dough also had his own company, Jon Dough Productions, for his gonzo product, in addition to his Doughboy Video line that were his oral titles. Dough was known as one of the most reliable studs in adult, and had the type of longevity that only a small amount of male performers have enjoyed in the past two decades. His sense of humor came through in series such as Anabolic's Ass Creampies, a line in which the girls got a plate of whipped cream in the face after the scene. During his most recent interview with AVN in the winter of 2005, Dough jokingly sang a few verses of a song about himself he called the "Ass Cream Man."

Fellow AVN Hall of Famer Ron Jeremy remarked, "I met Jon Dough way back. We went to Europe a couple times together, and when you travel internationally with someone, you really get to know them.

“Jon was a great guy. He always had a good attitude, he was funny, and he was a fantastic performer. He would always defend his friends.

“Being in my seventh year as a contracted male performer for Metro, I understand that Jon paved the way for male contract performers, him being the very first guy, when he signed with Vivid. He paved the way for some of us, in that respect.”

Adult performer Brian Surewood knew Dough for over a decade, even before Surewood began performing.

“He’s always gave me phenomenal advice," Surewood said. "I worked next to him in scenes hundreds of times. We were good friends. I knew he was going through some problems. I tried to help him out before with his problems."

Dough, who grew up Pennsylvania, is also survived by his father and three sisters.

Producer/director Mike John said Monday he knew Dough for about 10 years.

“He was just a really, really solid guy with a big heart," John said. "We had a lot of common interests outside of the business. We used to go up to Mammoth snowboarding quite a bit, just regular stuff that people do."

John continued, "He had a lot of problems... He bounced around a lot with deals. He was a strong-willed guy. It’s very surprising to me that he would go out like this. We all tried. He had a lot of people around him but I think he just isolated himself lately. I hadn't talked to him in two months."

John, one of the top gonzo shooters in adult, called Dough "a real innovator."

"A lot of the things he did went on to get copied wildly. We were just all sitting around talking, [Erik Everhard] and a bunch of us and we were saying he was one of the only guys to span the generations. There's Tommy Byron, Marc Wallice, Ron Jeremy and Jon was one of those second generation guys. And to the last day, he was the only one who would get in the trenches with the new upstarts and show them what was up.

"As a shooter, he was always full of good ideas. ... He was the real deal. He lived it. In the end though, I think it just wore him down. I've talked him back a million times."

John said that Dough had aspirations of mainstream acting before he got into porn.

"He was doing some soap operas and he got an offer to do a Hustler layout. He could do it, it worked, and he got more and more calls. Before you knew it, he was in this," John recalled. "Chet was kind of a wild guy. He was the first contract guy ever [for Vivid]. That was something that had never been donie before. Girls liked him and he was into having a good time."

Dough, who began performing in 1985 and has appeared in several classic adult films, has well over 1,000 titles to his credit as an actor. He has directed over 70 titles, most recently for VCA Excessive, Hustler, NJ Films and Anabolic.

Vince Vouyer, co-owner of Vouyer Media and a 15-year adult industry veteran, knew Dough for the last 14.

“Me and Chet weren’t hanging out having coffee, drinking beer together-type-of friends, but we had a lot of respect for each other throughout the years," Vouyer told AVN.com. "We've always been good to each other. I've worked on a lot of projects with him over the years, some with Vivid, and he was one of the good guys in the business who I actually liked.

"Unfortunately, the past few years have been rough, and he’s had some dependency problems. I don’t know what led up to this. I haven’t been in touch. I tried to put him in some scenes in the past four months. He had been available and then he wasn't available. He’s been calling me and I've been trying to get him in some scenes, but I hadn't been able to reach him.”

Vouyer added, "He was definitely a good woodsman. I’ve never seen him have bad days."

AVN Associate Editor Thomas Stanton contributed to this story.

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