LOS ANGELES — Aaliyah Love admits she still gets butterflies before doing feature movies, but she wouldn’t trade the opportunity for anything.
“It’s an honor to be hired for features,” Love said. “I enjoy acting. It makes me a nervous wreck from the day they hire me until the day we’re done shooting, but I keep it to myself. I don’t know if anyone can tell.”
So far, so good for Love, who has received an increasing number of bookings for plot-driven porn in 2014. And one film in particular is generating plenty of buzz in recent weeks as she rose to the occasion in Will Ryder’s parody of “American Hustle” for Smash Pictures.
In what may be her most high-profile role to date, Love assumes the persona of the main character’s wife Rosalyn, who in the Hollywood original was played by Jennifer Lawrence.
“She’s kind of a train-wreck in the movie and kind of a slut, but she’s lovable, so you’re rooting for her the whole movie,” Love explained. “I got to be snotty and use my New Jersey accent.
“I already saw the [original] movie and loved her character and then I went back and watched the movie another 20 times before we shot. It was a really fun, great project.”
In addition to displaying some acting skills, Love said she did a sex scene for the first time with Tommy Pistol in “American Hustle XXX,” which spoofs the 2013 comedy-drama directed by David O. Russell that was loosely based on an FBI sting operation in the late ’70s.
The performer said she had such a blast that she made it a point to get a souvenir.
“The outfits they had for us were so amazing. It was so much fun digging through the bins and trying them all on,” Love admitted. “They weren’t like cheesy Halloween costumes. [The producer Scott David] went to a bunch of thrift stores and E-bay getting vintage outfits for us.”
She continued, “I actually offered to buy every outfit I wore, but they only would let me have one. They sold me the green one. It was an avocado green, one-piece jumpsuit with a cow neck and camel-toe in the front and it rides up my back. It was totally hideous and totally ’70s and I absolutely love it. It might hang in my closet forever. Just knowing that I have it makes me happy.”
Indeed, Love has many reasons to smile in 2014, which so far may be the most eventful year of her porn career. She also added interracial scenes to her repertoire, appearing in her first one ever with Prince Yahshua for Elegant Angel’s “Pretty Petite” that was released in August.
The two enjoyed quite a build-up to their collision, according to Love.
“There was so much tension and anticipation, I almost burst open like a balloon,” she said. “I’ve known Prince for years. We always flirted and always had sexual tension, so it seemed like a perfect fit to choose him for my first. We went to a beautiful hotel and [the director] MimeFreak and I took a second day to shoot the tease.”
Her path to interracial performances was not unlike other steps in her career in that she eased into it.
“Everything in porn I’ve kind of eased into,” Love confessed. “I got my start 11 or 12 years ago doing web-cam. I was a pre-school teacher doing web-cam part time.”
She thought at first she’d only cam for a couple weeks, but she quickly became in demand on Video Secrets’ Flirt4Free platform. Soon after that she started getting recruited to do spokes model work at various adult industry expos, where she also began learning the business side of porn. That progression led to occasional solo video shoots.
“I would only shoot every once in a while,” said Love, who is represented by Adult Talent Managers (ATMLA) for bookings. “I got serious shooting girl/girl porn about three years ago. That’s like when I decided to make it my full-time job.”
She did only g/g scenes for two years while continuing to build her fan following through her website AaliyahLove.com — which launched in 2009 — before making her boy/girl porn debut in April 2013.
“I never felt pressured to do anything. I never felt desperate to do anything that I don’t want to do,” Love explained. “I’ve always just worked for companies that I wanted to work with, fucked who I wanted to fuck and done what I wanted to do. That’s why I haven’t gotten burned out and have no negative feelings.
“Porn is the best decision I ever made, the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m able to help family and friends because of porn.”
Love said she waited to do boy/girl simply because she didn’t think it was for her.
“When I was doing girl/girl, it just didn’t seem like something I would like. It felt way too intimate for some reason,” Love recalled.
Then a couple years ago she remembers hanging with some porn star friends at the bar in Las Vegas and coming to a realization about doing guys on camera.
“I thought to myself these people all look really happy and like they’re having fun. Most of them all did boy/girl. I thought, is there some sort of fun being had here that I’m missing out on?” Love joked. “This is how I try to make hard decisions. Five to 10 years from now when I’m looking back, do I regret doing that? Did it destroy my life? Or, do I regret not trying that? If I tried it and I hate it, I don’t have to do it again.”
So she decided to try a five-scene deal with Brazzers to see if she liked boy/girl.
“Ten minutes into scene number one I thought this is amazing. I love everything about this. Why the hell didn’t I do this years ago? This is the best sex I’ve ever had,” Love said. “The talent are some of the most beautiful people in the world. I have 20 orgasms in a day and I get to play dress-up.”
For the record, performer Keni Styles took Love’s boy/girl scene virginity.
“He did my first and I believe also what was my third or fourth scene,” Love said.
Now she’s lost count of her boy/girl encounters, though she’s starred in close to 120 movies that have been released on DVD in the past three years and performed in dozens more internet scenes.
“I made a list of every company I wanted to work for. It was a long list, but I’ve done several scenes for each company since then,” Love said.
The last company on her wish list, X-Art, was scheduled to shoot her for the first time a week after this mid-summer interview.
“I’m pretty fucking proud of X-Art.com,” she said. “I’ve always been such a fan of X-Art, since I was like 18 or 19.”
Meanwhile, her “passion project” since Day One has been AaliyahLove.com, which at post time was in the process of being revamped with loads of exclusive content produced and directed by Love herself.
“I’m sitting on 32 scenes — solo, girl/girl and boy/girl now,” Love revealed. “Some of the hottest scenes I’ve ever shot. It’s been really hard for me to not share the pictures. I’m really excited about it.”
Not bad for a girl from “a small, cornfield, Midwest town” who attended college in Baltimore and spent a lot of time on the East Coast before committing to porn as a profession. She still remembers her web-cam roots.
“I worked eight or nine hours a day teaching and made 42 to 45 dollars a day. Then I’d web-cam for another two hours and made 50 dollars,” Love recalled. “I started it because I was so poor on my teacher’s salary, with my 400-dollars-a-month apartment in the ghetto, driving a mini-van with two back windows smashed out, eating ramen.”
Nowadays Love is so busy that on her days off she relishes just “being antisocial.”
“My favorite thing to do these days is turn my phone off, walk my dogs, lay by the pool or go jogging on the beach,” she said.
Her latest work also includes new scenes in Digital Playground's "Girls of Summer," “Don’t Forget the Cream” for Zero Tolerance, “Lesbian Ghost Stories 3” for Girlfriends Films, a new volume of “We Live Together” for Reality Kings and various projects for Naughty America, where she’s become a regular.
