LOS ANGELES — In 2015, Remy LaCroix was on top of the porn industry.
She was winning awards, dating rock stars like Machine Gun Kelly, and was a fan favorite — a hula-hooping dreamgirl-next-door from NorCal who shared her thoughts and feelings openly on Twitter, with an aura of authenticity that predated the current age of permanent engagement.
Remy was the chill stoner babe with a beatific smile and her feelings on the surface. A raver and an actress and — it was widely recognized — a very, very exceptional portrayer of real female orgasms in an industry that has been known to fake them.
And then one day, Remy LaCroix walked away.
There was no scandal, no cancellation, no beefs — well, almost no beefs. This was 2010s porn and social media, after all. Yet one day, Remy just told her agents she “wasn’t available” and that day became several years.
Then, in mid-2021, Remy LaCroix decided she was ready for her comeback, and XBIZ began a series of exclusive interviews with her as the first installment of a new occasional series, “The Naked Truth,” featuring probing, no-holds-barred conversations with noted adult industry figures.
Tomorrow, Sept. 22, Bellesa Plus will debut Remy LaCroix’s official return to professional production, "Remy's Back With a Bang," an epic gangbang scene she conceived, with Jacky St. James, as her calling card for the second part of her storied career.
In the tradition of the classic 1960s Playboy Interview, XBIZ — which you should also read “for the articles” — brings you The Naked Truth… with Remy LaCroix.
You were at the top of your career, and then you decided to step down.
“Decided” is not the right word. I got pregnant and miscarried very quickly. And that whole process had a huge effect on me.
When you get pregnant, especially for the first time, you think, “Wow, this is the beginning of something absolutely amazing.” And so you go through this moment when you’re preparing to transform — and then when you lose that, you have to grieve. You're grieving a loss of all these things that you built up in your head.
So I was very much enveloped in that, and I got really severe post-miscarriage depression. And so I decided to just keep to myself and I balanced myself out. And then I got pregnant again. I gave birth to my first son. Then I was one-and-a-half months postpartum — and I got pregnant again, with my second son. And they're both great and healthy.
How was your time outside the industry?
I’ve just been really growing, as a person and as a mother — and it's been crazy.
How long was the first phase of your career?
My first pregnancy was July 2016, and I started in the industry around 2011. So, a little over five years.
Did it feel like a steady rise, like you were achieving more and more during those five years?
I see it as a little rocky, as far as waves go. And it’s still flowing!
I started off not even wanting a porn career, I just wanted to do the gangbang, because I wanted that experience. I didn't want to be a porn star. But one of the male talents in my first gangbang, for Kink.com, said, “You handled that like a champion, you should probably go to LA, you seem really happy!”
Where were you living at the time?
The gangbang was shot at Kink in San Francisco, and that's where I lived. I had no idea about porn. I was going to San Francisco State, I had just graduated. But although I wasn't planning on being in porn at all, I watched a lot of Kink.com videos. And I saw on their website, “You can become a model. Send us your pictures.” That's how I ended up getting into porn, and I just really loved the one scene.
Do you remember applying for your first porn shoot?
I remember, very vividly, taking the photos that I took, because I was thinking like, “Wow, this is such a big deal.” And then I even hesitated. You know, I had never sent nudes to guys! It wasn't my way of dating. I’m going to sound old now! You just met up and hung out and talked and whatever was natural was natural.
So I’m sending my nudes to somebody for the first time, and that somebody is a stranger at the Kink Castle! Thinking about it now, it was very strange, and like, vulnerable and mildly horrifying. But I still just said, “You know, this is something I wanted.”
But you were comfortable with your body? You came from the rave scene, and Burning Man.
That was way before porn too. That was just my lifestyle. That's just what I like. But then it was funny because one day Mason, the director, asked me about my talents for a teaser scene, and that's where the hula hoop came out! It was that famous scene with Lexi Belle, where she's on the roller skates and I'm doing a hula hoop thing. Mason was like, “What are you good at? What do you like?” And I was like, “Go buy me a hoop and I'll show you!” And so she was stoked on the idea and that thing kind of took off. Then everybody wanted me to hula hoop. People still ask me on OnlyFans and I get customers for it all the time.
Your signature prop.
I love doing it! It's a good workout. I dance, I feel happy.
We should get you a sponsorship from a hula hoop company.
I should have my own hula hoop company.
Back to your unstoppable rise. This is the part of the movie montage where you drive down to Los Angeles. Hollywood sign, Walk of Fame, Sunset Strip, etc.
Yup. I ended up taking that trip down to LA that the male talent suggested and that's when I met with my first agency. And so then I started shooting more but it wasn't just a steady rise. It was more like those rides that take you like this [makes winding motions with her hands] and then drop you like that.
So six months in, the rollercoaster drops?
I felt overworked, I felt I had no support in Los Angeles. No mental support or awareness.
How old were you at the time?
Twenty-two. And I was not happy — and that became a big deal because I made this blog post at the peak of everything. I was like the brand-new girl for only six months and I posted on my blog, “I just have to take a break really quick, my body's tired. It hurts.”
And I wasn't expecting people to make such a big deal out of it, but they called it a “retirement.” That’s not how I saw it. That wasn't my intention or my point of reference, you know? That was an interesting reaction from everyone else.
You took a break.
I did rest my body, and then I continued to book shoots and that's when everything started to really go like [diagonal "up" hand motion]. That's when I started shooting for all the big companies.
Was there a specific moment when you realized, “Oh, I'm a porn star now”?
My first big award, when I won Best New Starlet — that was that moment. I was like, “Wow, this room is full of fucking beautiful people. And I'm the one standing here. This. Is. Crazy.” And then I kind of got used to that feeling. The year 2015 was, they told me, “my” year. I even got to perform with the guy I was seeing — Machine Gun Kelly. That year was important to me because I won two Best Actress awards. I love acting. A lot of my acting awards were for my movie that I did with Jacky St. James, “The Temptation of Eve.”
Did you have a background in acting?
I was a theater kid. And I’m obsessed with voice acting, like cartoon voices. I truly love acting and being on camera, and also playing myself. All of the above. That's a huge thing that I still would like to do.
Right around when you were getting started was the peak of Sasha Grey’s “crossover” into the mainstream. Were you following her career?
I didn't really learn about other specific performers until people started comparing me to them. And then I'd look someone up and be like, “Oh my gosh, she's great!” And then I'd become a fan.
I get the impression that the industry used to be more catty, in the early 2010s, than it is right now.
A lot of porn stars that were already established immediately took me as a threat, which was confusing to me. Because as I got to know their work, I admired them, I looked up to them. I thought, “They are strong, and really brave for being able to do this.” So for some of them to say, “Oh, you know, this new little girl just wants the attention,” that hurt my feelings a lot.
Was that because you started off with a pretty extreme gangbang?
Yes. But ultimately I am proud of that scene. In this particular situation, it was literally what I was craving and what I wanted to experience. I didn't want to jump onto the porn scene this way. I just wanted this one experience and I wanted it to be raw and real and exactly what I had been watching online.
Had you ever done anything like that in your civilian life?
Never, ever! I’d only had vanilla relationships my whole life. And so that's what drove me to that point. I was super sexually frustrated, like neglected and frustrated. I was 22 and like, “Why do I feel like I need to fuck everything right now?”
It is sort of odd that you didn't try it first without a pro crew shooting you.
Because I don't trust people. I wanted it to be professional, and tested. And obviously, porn guys are hotter.
So I'm just not the type of girl who can orchestrate that kind of thing from a bar, or meeting people out or doing anything like that. I think that now, I am that type of person. Absolutely. I organized my Bellesa comeback gangbang. But at the beginning, what I was looking for was safety. And that's what they gave me.
But you were living in San Francisco, not Salt Lake City. Couldn't you have just gone to a sex party?
I didn't know about the Kink Castle until after the fact, so I guess I just jumped in, head first and eyes closed, and then I opened my eyes. And then I was like, “Okay, now I see where I am.” It was kind of backwards. Not “What am I jumping into?” but more like, “What did I just jump into?”
And then it became your job.
I really always wanted a job that I liked. And I've never “worked” a day in porn — except for long feature days. Those are work.
And then the non-decision decision happened, and suddenly you were in Northern California with two kids.
There was never an “I quit.” No, you're just “not available” while you're going through something, and then a week becomes a month becomes a year or several. But thank goodness OnlyFans existed when it did, because it came right at the time when I had my first child and it served as the perfect bridge until just now. And I'm already set to go back to work.
Since you’ve always been so open about your status as a mother, how do you feel about the concept of “MILF”?
It’s a much more empowered sexuality, to begin with. I feel like my body, and especially all of my female organs, like, everything is one. MILF to me isn't maybe how it's been defined in the last two decades. That term has kind of strayed away from what it really means. It doesn't always mean just like an older lady with a lot of work done and some banging body, or she looks younger but she's older and experienced, and it's different. That's not the only thing a mother is. So I would like to just redefine the whole term altogether. I'm a mother, I am full of sexuality. There's got to be some way we can blend both of those into the picture.
Perhaps the industry hasn’t come up with the vocabulary to talk about a concept of a sexually assertive woman between teen and a very specific kind of "Va va voom" MILF?
So let's come up with it! You're either a “girl next door,” or then in that in-between stages, it’s so weird, because you're not the babysitter, but you're not the mom. You're just a normal young woman. But they still call you “girl next door” because you don't look old enough yet.
What would you call that in-between phase?
Why do there need to be stages? Why aren't we just women? But then when it comes to the term MILF, those are “mothers.” Those are mothers who have grown babies, those are mothers who have had sex in a very inviting way, to create life and birth that life from the same place you received it, and then you know... stretch marks! I'm talking about natural bodies, stretch marks and actual MILF attributes.
But yeah, I don't have the language for it because the culture doesn't. But that's what it needs. What the culture needs is some realness.
Do you think the rise of OnlyFans has shown that people crave a measure of reality and authenticity?
I know men or women, or just everybody, watches porn to escape the reality or get into something a little bit more dangerous or interesting, or whatever it is you're looking for. But I think there's also a lot of people who just want what's real.
What's real is that I had two kids and my ass has stretch marks now. What's real is I have a mom pooch that I'm trying to get rid of. Talk to any mom, it's real! It's a real-life rite of passage, becoming a mother. I'm tired of that being misrepresented.
So, how is 2022 Remy LaCroix going to represent it?
I am a 34-year-old woman experiencing the sex that I want to have now. I'm growing and changing and everything is going to change with me. I don't fit in that box anymore. There's so much more of me to give. Because becoming a mother really breaks you open. There's just so much more that I have to give than what I've given the porn industry already.
And you have a loyal fandom.
I can tell you that a lot of my empowerment has come from my fans’ responses to my new OnlyFans content. Like, “We love your body” and “You're such a woman and not the little girl-next-door skinny thing.” So they're keeping me motivated in this mindset to be like, “This is who I am.” My fans have actually been keeping me very uplifted, very motivated.
These issues about physical representation go way beyond porn, though.
Exactly. I’m not even talking about porn here. I'm talking about the way the world views aging. Men are sexy when they're salt-and-peppery, with those cowboy wrinkles. This is encouraged for them. And everything about women is anti-aging, face-lift, Botox. I get it, but I'm forging my own path, which is a very natural path that all of us have to go through. We age; you're not going to look 22 forever. And it's not fair to women to just expect women to always look young, while men get to be praised for looking like George Clooney, like Robert Downey Jr. I want to be like these handsome men — I want to be salt-and-peppery and banging! This is the natural process. You just grow into yourself more.
Which brings us to July 2021, when Remy LaCroix decided it was time for her comeback.
That's when I started planning it with Jacky. My comeback scene has been in the works for over a year! And we've had lots and lots of talks about it, and then I came to Los Angeles to shoot it in July this year.
Although you had been shooting content already.
I come from a different era of pre-OnlyFans porn. Doing OnlyFans content does not necessarily mean “a comeback” to me, you know? OnlyFans is where we as performers do content trades and help each other out in that way.
But when I say “comeback,” I mean the way that I came onto the scene the very first time. Like a mainstream set with professionals, and it's just a different caliber.
Who did you choose for the official comeback scene?
There were five really gorgeous gentlemen! It was Dante Colle, Spencer Barrick, Tommy Pistol, Ramon Nomar and John Strong. What you’d call a solid, solid group, right? [laughs]
I think that the best part of this whole experience was the fact that I had full control over the scene, over the talent casting, what the scene looked like. Even the sex stills that we did exuded the vibe that I really wanted, which was “nasty passion.”
What were your feelings during the shoot?
You plan these things and you can talk about it up until a certain point, but until it actually happens, it’s just talk. And when it actually happened — oh boy, it was absolutely magical. Like, I had so much fun, and I could tell the boys were also having so much fun, and everybody was just there for each other working as a team.
It wasn't the type of gangbang where it's the classic, “Okay, we're using this girl as a Fleshlight and we're “owning” her. It was like, “I own this situation.” And I was living out my biggest fantasy.
And creatively speaking, this is your project.
I told Jacky that I wanted this scene to be a big comeback scene and also that I was very interested in directing. That's where I see my career path going. And she said, “Take the reins.” And once we were all on set, that's really what happened. She just gave me full creative control. And the guys really got the memo. It just went really, really well.
What were the logistics of directing and also performing such a demanding physical scene?
It was spontaneous — that's the way that things unfolded. Once we were all dressed and ready and sitting on set, and we had done sex stills and everything, they were joking about how I was going to let them know what to do. And I just gave them very specific keywords like “passion,” “kissing,” “super nasty.”
Tommy was really sweet, honing in on what was okay and what was not okay. So he's like, “Can I pull your hair? Are you okay with the roughness?” And I said, “Absolutely, as long as there's kissing.” There has to be a lot of give-and-take in this, not just “take take take.” That's what makes “Remy’s Back With a Bang” different.
And then shortly before the official comeback, you also shot with Dredd.
On my OnlyFans, all of my fans for years have been requesting that I work with Dredd, like non-non-nonstop, and I think that was just something that needed to happen, and so we we booked a content trade.
It was so funny when I started to see the comments on my tweets promoting it because they were like, “The queen is back!” And I'm like, “That's a content trade! That's not me on an actual set with hair and makeup and real cameras and a whole crew.” Or me on top of my game being able to put in my creative input. It's a different world.
I can see how the fans would misconstrue that because they may think that is what “porn” is now, because so many people are doing content trades on OnlyFans and a lot of big-name porn stars especially. But still, in my mind, I come from a different era where there were DVDs, there were box covers, all of these other things before OnlyFans and so for my brain that's different.
Why was 2022 the right time for your official comeback?
Back then I left porn because I fell in love and I got pregnant. I have two really beautiful, beautiful kids now and they're, you know, getting back into school. And I've done the motherhood thing. And I really want my life back.
I really genuinely missed being on set. When we shot “Remy’s Back With a Bang,” it was one of the best days I've had in a long time. Regardless of the gangbang — just being on set, with Jacky and Eddie Powell and Shawn Alff and the whole crew.
The biggest deciding factor for me was that there's a lot of my identity in Remy. It's not just a character. I feel like she's my outlet. And I really, really miss that.
So you wanted to get reacquainted with Remy?
Yes. I reincorporated her.
What did you feel changed between your previous stint in adult and now?
The last time I was on set was a Girlsway girl-girl scene a long time ago, 2015 or 2016? I don't even remember my last shoot.
So you didn’t walk out to your car with a check and a “So long, suckers!”
No, no, no! [laughs] That wasn't the mentality at all. When we did get pregnant, it was a surprise. So that's what really switched gears in my life.
The pregnancy was the catalyst.
My attitude was, “This is time to set some roots down. I had just turned 30 when I had my first child. I think my heart and my brain really just wanted those roots. And I've always wanted to have kids. And then for years I couldn’t even think of being on a set, because I have two boys so close together in age. It's just been really challenging.
How did your feelings change between your very first scene and that last time on set, when you didn’t even know that you’d be gone for years?
The very first time I did a scene, I don't know the word to use for it other than, like, “hungry.” That's a good word, yeah. So that was the feeling that I had for that first thing. My last shoot, it just sort of felt like porn was fizzling out of my life as I was searching for more meaning.
And then fast-forward to now. I’ve grown so much. I have so much more self-awareness, I have so much more respect for my body. I know how to plan out my shoots to give myself time to rest. Whereas before it was shoot, shoot, shoot, one day off, shoot, shoot, shoot, and then you know you're burnt out.
After I had been in for like six months, I said, “Hey, I need a break!” I wanted to scream, “Can't you see how much I'm shooting and what my body might be going through?” And I was only 23, 24 at the time. Pretty young. And it was a lot. It was a lot. I’ve really learned how to take care of myself better. And I feel like that's putting me into my sexual prime.
Rise of the WILF, right? “Woman” instead of just “Mom”?
I don't think the woman that was on set for “Remy’s Back With a Bang” is the same one who was on set in that very, very first scene, if we're comparing. She's grown a lot. And wants more. And knows it. And knows how to get it. So I think that's the biggest difference.
And after coming back with a bang, are you sticking around?
I see myself performing for a while. I genuinely love performing. But where my creative focus is right now, it’s really learning all of the production side of everything. I want to learn how to shoot really great photos, and I want to learn how to hold a camera and shoot a really great scene.
I already love writing and scripts, and that stuff comes really naturally to me. But really learning the hardware and the lighting, and how to manage a set, and how to work a schedule and do all of these things that I've never had to do as a performer, I see that as growth.
And you couldn’t ask for a better mentor than Jacky St. James. That’s pretty special.
I’m going to be Jacky’s apprentice for Bellesa and she's agreed to teach me how to direct and how to shoot, how to cast, how to schedule. So that's going to be a really big step in the right direction.
I mean, duh, what’s not special about Jacky! She just is the most thoughtful, aware, kind, honest person that I have ever met in my life, in or out of porn. I can't speak highly enough of her. She was my first and only choice to help me with this comeback.
And she really let you be comfortable until it was the right time over the past year.
I really needed to focus on my mental health between the time I started talking with her about it and the time we finally shot. And I really appreciated that because we are friends. And it's not just like this director saying, “When are you ready? Now?” Jacky really did let me choose my time.
And it wasn’t a particularly easy time for you.
I went through some things in this last year where I struggled with loss, sobriety, a number of different things in my personal life where I just didn't feel like that might have been the best time. And so the reason that we set it for this summer was because it really finally felt right. For both of us.
You did open up a lot about your sobriety journey in public and in real time, through tweets and blog posts.
Yeah. I've always been a bit of an oversharer. Especially on social media because I'm not this one-dimensional “porn person.” I am me. And it comes with a grain of salt. So when I was going through my hard times last year, I did post a blog, and I did mention on my Twitter, “Hey, this is what I'm going through. And it's heavy.”
But what came out of that is that, first, I cringed at myself a little bit. And then what came pouring out was the utmost support from fans. And even to this day, I still have people just sending me little messages like “I hope it's going well,” “I hope you're healthy,” “I hope you're happy.” All of these really uplifting messages. Being honest about heavy things like that, or other things that I've been through, has just brought me more support. I really do have the best fans.
This may sound like an oxymoron, but your “authenticity” has always been part of your “brand.” What does authenticity mean to you?
It means genuineness. I know someone is authentic because I know that they are themselves around any type of person. It doesn't matter if it's with me, with Jacky, with your mother, with anybody — they are always them. And I know who they are when they’re alone, because they’ve proven it to me through their actions.
Now there’s social media platforms for creating a sense of closeness and intimacy. But you were already selling that in the DVD days.
I show up as as myself. That's what authenticity means to me. If you're showing up as yourself, you get the same person you would have met when you're alone.
But sometimes that means sharing things that are not going to give people boners.
Yeah, but it’s not just my pussy that I’m offering — it’s my heart and brain. Are you here for just the boner or are you here for the whole package? [Smiles.]
Images: Remy LaCroix, Gustavo Turner, Bellesa
