Candida Royalle, a former star of pornographic movies who became a self-styled feminist filmmaker spurning what she called a misogynistic “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” genre to create erotica that would appeal to women, died on Monday at her home in Mattituck, N.Y., on Long Island. She was 64.

The cause was ovarian cancer, said her friend and fellow actress and writer Veronica Vera.

Ms. Royalle was 30 when she shifted from starring in movies to producing and directing films for her own company, Femme Productions. She defined her work as female-oriented, sensuously explicit cinema as opposed to formulaic hard-core pornographic films that she said degraded women for the pleasure of men.

With her niche foray into pornography, Ms. Royalle maintained, performers gained a degree of dignity and a male-dominated industry belatedly recognized that couples could enjoy blue movies together. She also saw an untapped market.

“Women were curious and wanted to see if there were some sexy movies they could enjoy with their partner, and there was nothing out there for that,” she told Smashing Interviews magazine last year.