Five starlets found dead in the span of three months has the XXX Biz searching for answers…
The porn industry is in crisis. Since November 10th, five female performers have been found dead. And while each of their situations and certainly the lives they lived were unique, all are bound together by an undeniable truth; Each of them left this world way too soon and all of their deaths could have been prevented. This wave of death that is sweeping the ranks of adult film industry must be stopped.
But before any kind of solution can be reached, the Industry must first fully acknowledge the problem. I’d like to think that after seeing five of their own found dead that everyone in the porn business was coming together to address the issue. As of this writing, I don’t think that’s happened.
What’s happening?
Between November 10th and January 18th, Shyla Stylez, August Ames, Yurizan Beltran, Olivia Nova and Olivia Lua all past away. The average age of this group was 26 years old. Shyla Stylez, the oldest of them, was 35 years old at the time of her death. Olivia Nova was only 20 years old.
So the obvious question is; What caused this wave of death that’s currently ripping through the porn industry?
The common answer to that question is even more heartbreaking; The pressures of working in the porn business can at times be overwhelming and when breaking points are reached, there aren’t a whole lot of resources available to help people who have fallen into crisis.
Across the Internet, a whole bunch of people who are a lot smarter than me have written all sorts of articles — on sites like Newsweek, Rolling Stone and Men’s Health — detailing the numerous problems facing adult performers today, citing specific examples of how broken this machine has become and the types of pressures these entertainers face as part of their daily work routine.
I’m just a dumbass porn blogger, so I won’t make this another one of those articles. Instead, I’ll leave you with a brief introduction to the five lives that we’ve lost and then go back to hoping that the people within the porn industry who have the power and resources to address this problem do exactly that. This. Shit. Must. Stop.
Shyla Stylez | 1982 – 2017
Shyla Stylez was one of the porn industry’s top performers of the 2000’s. A native of British Columbia, Ms. Stylez began her porn career in 2001 and performed up until 2016. Over the span of that time, Shyla appeared in nearly 550 hardcore videos, was a contract starlet for Jill Kelly Productions and was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2016.
Die-Screaming ranked Shyla Stylez as the #3 Best Canadian Pornstar of all time.
On November 10th 2017, news broke that Shyla Stylez had been found dead. While staying with her mother in Canada, Stylez apparently died in her sleep. She was 35 years old.
August Ames | 1994 – 2017
August Ames began her porn career at the age of 19 in 2013. She wasted no time in establishing herself as one of the porn industry’s brightest young talents and was a three-time AVN Female Performer of the Year nominee. Over the span of her career, Ms. Ames performed in well over 300 hardcore movies and was one of the most popular women working in smut right up until her death.
Additionally, Die-Screaming ranked August Ames as the #7 Best New Female Pornstar of 2014, the #4 Best Canadian Pornstar of All Time and as having the #2 Best Set of Boobs in Porn.
On December 6th, it was announced that August Ames had taken her own life after being severely harassed on Twitter by some of her fellow performers and their fans. After her death, August’s husband published a blog post in which he blasted several prominent figures within the porn industry and leveled the blame for her death squarely at them because of how he say they bullied August.
Yurizan Beltran | 1986 – 2017
Yurizan Beltran was a longtime XXX industry veteran, having began her adult film career in 2005 at the age of 19. During the span of her 12 year career, Yurizan performed in over 300 films and was nominated for some of the industry’s most prestigious awards. In addition to the work she did for studios, Ms. Beltran also produced content for her own membership website.
On December 13th, a week after the suicide of August Ames, Yurizan Beltran was found dead. According to reports, the official cause of her death was due to a prescription medication overdose.
Olivia Nova | 1998 – 2018
Olivia Nova worked in porn for less than a full year, having begun her hardcore career in 2017. During her time with the industry, Ms. Nova had performed in about 20 films for various studios. Because of the short period of time that she was performing in smut, Olivia wasn’t well-known, though she was nominated for a 2018 AVN Award just weeks before her death.
Olivia Nova was found dead in a hotel room on January 7th. While her official cause of death was a urinary tract infection that had gone septic and caused her to go into shock, friends and family of Ms. Nova say that she had been struggling with a severe drug problem right up until the day she died.
Olivia Lua | 1995 – 2018
Olivia Lua made her porn debut in 2016 and went on to perform in nearly 85 hardcore movies, many of which were produced for sites like ManyVids and Clips4Sale. She also did a fair amount of work for some of the major studios, including Evil Angel, Reality Kings and Vixen. Olivia Lua shot her last XXX scene in late 2017.
On January 18th, it was announced that Olivia Lua had been found dead in a West Hollywood rehab facility. In a statement, LA Direct Models, the talent agency that represented Ms. Lua, had this to say…
Olivia joined LA Direct Models in April 2017, though had not been available for work since early October of last year, as she had been facing some personal challenges that had seen her in residential rehab for a period of nearly three months and from which she had been out for about a month, hoping to make a return to work in the early part of this year.
We learned today that she had returned to a different facility in West Hollywood after a relapse, approximately a week ago, at which she was found deceased this morning.
Family and close friends [said] they had deep concern at the volume of prescription drugs prescribed to Olivia and the danger this posed [to] her. If this was mixed with recreational drugs or alcohol, it is believed this to be the cause of her passing.
