There’s a point in nearly every man’s life when he thinks to himself; I wonder if I could become a porn star. Wait, how do you become a porn star?
There are many, many misconceptions that people have about the adult industry. Chief among them is that it’s an easy gig: we love the idea of a job where all you have to do is show up, take off your clothes, and have sex all day. And while that’s a large part of it, there’s a lot more to doing porn than just showing up—particularly for dudes.
Of course, you need to be well-endowed—like super well-endowed—but you also need the stamina to perform for hours under hot lights. That 27-minute clip you watched on Pornhub? That likely took an entire day to shoot—or at least multiple hours. You also need to be able to perform with a dozen crew members watching. As for the pay, it’s not nearly as good as you think it is unless you’re one of the top porn stars in the world. (Although with the rise of personal content subscription services like Onlyfans and JustforFans, some adult performers are starting to make five figures a month.)
So for those guys who think they’re ready to march into a porno production company in the San Fernando Valley and plop their members on the casting agent’s table, here’s what you need to know about becoming a male porn star.
It’s close to impossible to get your foot in the door.
A lot of guys ask male porn stars how to break into the industry, which is a fair question: after all, there’s no LinkedIn or Indeed.com for male porn stars, right? But Ryan Driller (above), who has performed in porn for nearly a decade, says that guys are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to entering the industry. “It’s all dumb luck,” he told MensHealth.com. “You can’t ask another guy to get you in. You can’t ask studios to try out you. You can’t get a girl to bring you in. Most of the time.”
Not every guy has this experience. Aaron “Small Hands” Thompson, for instance, entered the industry through his wife, porn star (and MensHealth.com contributor) Joanna Angel, who tapped him to perform with her for her website Burning Angel. “Basically I became a male pornstar because it was ‘free labor’ for my wife,” he told MensHealth.com. But if you don’t have the benefit of waking up every morning next to one of the most popular female performers in the industry, you’re probably out of luck.
Even if you do get in front of the camera, you may have stage fright.
When it comes to straight porn, directors only want a few simple things from male performers: “They want to know that you can get hard, last the time required, give them the performance that they want, and pop when they need you to,” says Driller. “Your face, your look, etc. are all not important.”
Sounds easy, right? Well, not so much. Driller says that even though most guys think they’d be able to perform on a porn set, more often than not that’s not the case. So while you may think that you can get hard and stay hard with dozens of people watching, “you don’t actually know until you’re there. That stage fright is why new guys only get their shot on a last-minute, dire-need try out basis… no one is really willing to take a gamble on whether or not you’ll be able to perform in the setting needed.”
