Getting Into Porn? Star Panel Tells Actors What They Need To Know (AVN)

Read the full article by Mark Kernes at AVN.com ... and wishes they had known before beginning their lives in adult. LAS VEGAS, Nev.—Free Speech Coalition's Lotus Lain and the FSC's “INSPIRE” program deserve credit for putting together a beautifully diverse assemblage of panelists for the panel discussion "What I Wish I Would Have Known," which took place January 23 during the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas. The group of speakers could be described as offering "something (or someone) for everyone."

Just to run it down, the panel, which was moderated by performer/director Casey Calvert, consisted of veteran actress (and veteran sex educator) Jessica Drake, male actor Wolf Hudson, trans star Casey Kisses, "plus-size" model Karla Lane, and award-winning black star Ana Foxxx—and it's hard to believe there'd be something a newbie in porn would need to know that someone in that group couldn’t tell them.

Calvert began by asking each panelist how long they'd been in the biz, and it turned out the "youngest" (two of them) were four years in, compared to Drake's 20, much of that time under contract to Wicked Pictures—and the tales of just how the panelists got into acting was nearly as diverse. For Drake, it was through porn stars she'd met while dancing at strip clubs in Texas, while for Foxxx, it was on account of a "shitty boyfriend" who brought her into the industry with him.

For Lane, it was after observing guys come out of arcade booths in adult stores "happy," "so I wanted to do whatever that was." Kisses had plenty of time to contemplate what she wanted to do with her life while confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, and decided to turn her part-time cam work into a full-time video career.

The audience got a kick out of Hudson telling them that he started out as a bookkeeper for a button distributor, but after being laid off, he saw an ad on Craigslist for a gangbang—"and the rest is history."