Between hard-core sex scenes, posing for photos, adult film conventions, and Internet stardom, porn actors and actresses are slowly but surely becoming household names. With estimates as high as $14 billion in annual income, the adult entertainment industry is no joke. It’s estimated that the business brings in more money per year than Yahoo, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon combined.[1] It’s also estimated to bring in more money than the NBA, NFL, and MLB combined—that’s a massive demand for sex.
For better or for worse, pornography is ubiquitous throughout our culture. And with the industry being so massive comes a variety of personalities, ranging from the mild adult film actor or actress who works for a while and then moves on to something else to the wild, drug-fueled, rampaging maniacs we see in other industries but seem to be particularly drawn to businesses where fast money and wild living are the norm.
10 Tory Lane
Tory Lane is an adult film actress who has starred in many movies and been contracted to several different film companies. At 20 years old, she began her career doing hard-core penetration scenes. She won an AVN Best POV Sex Scene award in 2009, but her career hasn’t always been roses. Tory was arrested in January 2015 for battery after getting “rip-roaring drunk” on a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, during which she allegedly assaulted crew members in a drunken frenzy.[2]
Further still, she assaulted the police officers who attempted to escort her from the aircraft and arrest her. Apparently, she had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the plane. Considering how tight those airline seats are, can she really be blamed for the incident?
9 Asia Carrera
Asia Carrera is one of the most popular names in the adult film industry. She’s an actress, writer, and director as well as a multitalented individual who does work outside the industry. And it’s no wonder why she’s so popular; as one of the hardest-working women in show business, Asia Carrera has been featured in over 250 hard-core adult films. That’s a lot of sex! However, 2015 was an unkind year for porn stars, as Asia would be arrested for drunk driving after taking her daughter to school. Her mug shot was less than flattering.
Interestingly, unlike most DUIs, Asia wasn’t driving or even in her vehicle when the arrest took place. She took her daughter to school, found a comfy-looking couch in the building, and passed out. The police found her there, reeking of alcohol, and decided to wake her. Upon regaining consciousness, she confessed that she’d driven her daughter to school heavily under the influence. She then attempted to flee.[3] Of all the ways to get a DUI, passing out on a couch in a high school seems the most unlikely, but Miss Carrera managed to pull it off wonderfully.
8 Dakota Skye
All the good tales of insanity seem to come from Florida. Between alligators, hurricanes, drug problems, and alcoholism, it’s like the Australia of the United States. Dakota Skye was arrested in Clearwater, Florida, for domestic battery for an after-sex altercation with her boyfriend in 2017.
The story goes like this: The two did it, and then afterward, her boyfriend, Robert Anderson Jr., wanted her to leave. Dakota Skye (real name Lauren Kaye Scott) was on her cell phone and refused to get off. At this point, Anderson got upset and told her to leave, and she slapped him in the face, splitting his lip.[4] If only they’d caught that on film, perhaps they could have made a fortune.
7 Cameron Diggs
Many of us are quite familiar with female porn stars, as just by the very nature of the industry, men are usually less visual and less featured. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a fair share of male adult film stars with crazy antics and interesting tales of debauchery and chaos when they’re off the set. Timothy Harper, known professionally as Cameron Diggs, arguably outdoes them all in weirdness. First and foremost, he’s a gay porn star covered in white supremacist and neo-Nazi tattoos . . . which seems like quite a contradiction.
In 2017, Harper was arrested in a meth ring bust in which SWAT team members descended upon his apartment. He was one of four people arrested, possessing a massive 1.6 kilograms (3.5 lb) of methamphetamine.[5] With his Nazi lightning bolt tattoos, iron cross ink, and a prison gang–like image, it’s somewhat unsurprising that he would be involved in a meth ring, but it is a bit surprising that he would be a gay adult film star by day and a neo-Nazi drug kingpin by night.
6 Jenna Jameson
Where in the world would porn be without one of America’s (and the world’s) most beloved actresses? Jenna Jameson may, in fact, be the most popular name in adult entertainment history, up there with John Holmes. She’s been featured in tons of adult films and even mainstream movies such as Howard Stern’s Private Parts and Zombie Strippers.
Her fame and notoriety haven’t come without at least some trouble in paradise, though. In 2013, Jameson was arrested on a charge of battery. While she was out on a night on the town in Newport Beach, California, she allegedly assaulted someone. Jameson’s adversary placed her under citizen’s arrest and found a police officer, who cited her for battery.[6]
5 Montana Fishburne
Montana Fishburne is a lesser-known adult film actress. She’s less famous for her appearances in movies than she is for her father, Laurence Fishburne, who angrily disowned her for her career and life choices. Montana Fishburne has been arrested not only once for DUI[7] but also again for prostitution, a charge which she pleaded out of and into a work alternative program.
Sometimes you can be born into the best of situations and still turn out to be wild . . . wild enough to do porn and get arrested, at least.
4 David Meza
When it comes to the adult film industry, there’s no shortage of awkward and bizarre cases to go around. Such is the case of David Maza, a gay porn star who conspired with his pregnant girlfriend to kill his millionaire Texan lover. If that’s not a movie plot, who knows what is, but it happened in real life. In 2015, the couple took the man to a Mexican resort near the US border, where they would be seen leaving their room at separate times. A few days later, the body of the lover, Jake Merendino, was found nearly decapitated.
David Meza would ultimately be convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, along with 20 more years for obstruction of justice.[8]
3 Marilyn Chambers
Of course not all arrests on this list are rock-bottom moments that the person in cuffs ends up deeply regretting. Sometimes, getting arrested is necessary for the advancement of society and for the advancement of certain industries or even ideas. The arrest of Marilyn Chambers is no different.
In 1985, during her live full-frontal nudity show, Chambers was interrupted mid-performance and arrested by the San Francisco police. With the ubiquitous nature of porn today, being streamed into pretty much every household (whether we want to admit it or not), it’s hard to imagine a time when adult films, live shows, or posing naked were an arrestable offenses.[9] Chambers was charged with lewd conduct, her first arrest of her life for anything at all. It was a battle for the future of adult entertainment, and Miss Chambers took one for the team and kept going.
2 Bruno Knight
Based on this list, you’d think there’s possibly a connection between meth and gay porn stars. Bruno Knight, whose real name is Phillip Gizzie, was arrested in in 2014 by US Drug Enforcement Administration agents while attempting to board a plane from the United States to the United Kingdom, as he attempted to smuggle 0.2 kilograms (0.5 lb) of methamphetamine in his anus.[10]
Most people find flights extremely uncomfortable by default, which begs the question of why on Earth would anyone want to intentionally endure an international flight of hours upon hours, in one of the most uncomfortable seats imaginable, all with the discomfort of having drugs shoved in their anus?
1 John Curtis Holmes
Known better as simply John Holmes, or by his stage name Johnny Wadd, John Curtis Holmes was arguably the first male porn star. With a massive . . . tool to rocket his career into stardom, he quickly became involved in the LA scene of crime, guns, pornography, and, of course, drugs. After his heyday in the adult film industry in the 1970s, drugs had ravaged Holmes, robbing him of his ability to perform or work by 1980. Eventually, Holmes would be forced to turn to petty crime to support himself (and his habits), namely carjacking, burglary, and drug dealing.
Holmes’s personal problems would eventually come to a head when he was implicated and arrested for the Wonderland murders, a retaliatory set of killings allegedly conspired by drug kingpin Eddie Nash. The floor of the grim crime scene would contain four bodies bludgeoned to death with a steel pipe on the morning of July 1, 1981.[11] It’s fairly certain that the late John Holmes, who died of AIDS in 1988, was involved in the murders.
At this point, it’s not a question of whether Holmes was involved or not, just one of specific details pertaining to how. From his fame during the heyday of adult film to his (we can say with a fair degree of certainty) involvement in brutal murders to even his “talent” and endowment that shot him to stardom in the first place, what is sure is that whatever he did, John Holmes definitely did it big.
I like to write about the dark side of humanity, history, psychology, and philosophy. I’m the owner and administrator of Serial Killer Memes, Murderworks Horror, and several other pages on Facebook.