LAS VEGAS—As anyone who's been in (or a fan of) the adult industry for a while knows, Steven St. Croix is one of the best adult actors around, so it's hardly surprising that he won the Best Actor honors for his role in New Sensations Couples' Torn—except that St. Croix himself might disagree.
"I recently told someone, 'You know, I realize that people just assume that I'm so good that I just wake up spouting monologues, but there are weaknesses in my craft as an actor that I'm well aware of, and one of those things is being able to play vulnerability, being able to contain myself instead of "chewing the scenery," as they say,'" St. Croix reflected. "Containment and focus are things that I've always had to work on, and because of this particular role, I was just getting out of something personally that was very painful for me, so it was very hard for me to go into that space in my head that allowed me to be open and to be vulnerable and to not play the person that has buttoned up that trauma and that pain and has moved past it. So I had to revisit that, so it was very difficult for me, and I think people don't realize that."
Also, St. Croix's having been away from performing between late 2010 and the beginning of 2012 didn't help in landing the role.
"When I came back, Dana DeArmond had told me about this director, Jacky St. James, who was writing movies that were considered couples features: strong on story and strong on character," he recalled. "So I had contacted Renae at New Sensations and Renae said, 'Let me introduce you to Jacky,' so I went in there and I met with Jacky. She was actually in the middle of writing Torn, and as she was writing the character that I played, she couldn't think of anyone who could play the character. So we met, we spoke for 20 minutes, and she didn't know who I was; she'd heard of me, but we had that initial meeting, and she asked me to come in and audition a couple of weeks later, [for] which she apologized profusely after we'd finished shooting the movie, but she's like, 'I never worked with you so I don't know what you can and can't do,' and I totally understood."
One of the things St. Croix liked best about Torn was being able to work with two excellent actresses: one older (India Summer) and one younger (Remy LaCroix).
"I love India," he said. "The way that she carries herself, and her physical looks and her physical presence is very sexy, and she aspires to do really her best when it comes to acting. In the story, our sex scene is supposed to be a little distant, like she's not really into it, she's just going through the motions. As it played out in reality, though, it became very passionate, which I think was more real, because my character had this deep love for his wife and he wanted to express it physically and she was kind of denying him, so I think initially the thought was kind of like an angry sex, or 'I just want to get my nut,' but as it played out, this pent-up passion and frustration that he had for his wife, who he truly was still in love with, made the scene much more layered than was originally on paper, and I thought it was a great scene.
"Remy, she was new," he continued. "I had never worked with her, and so when I first met her, there was this youth and this bounciness and this energy of, I guess, maybe two different generations coming together, and I was really impressed by how she approached her role. She was great as an actress. The sex with her was really—I actually felt a little unfulfilled, like I really want to work with her again because I don't think we really scraped the bottom of the barrel with what we could probably do, but she was fantastic and I think she definitely deserved winning Best New Starlet."
