Adult performer Lacey Starr approached the porn industry on a rather unconventional path. She began getting roles in 2013 at the age of 54, having already established herself as a teacher and certified therapist. Since then, Starr has appeared in hundreds of hardcore films and released dozens of DVDs under her own production company, Lacey Starr Productions. Last week her first DVD under a new deal with Pulse Distribution began shipping. The award-winning GILF performer answered a series of questions about her new DVDs, her website, her success on social media and more, proving her skills extend to writing as well.
First off, what's the climate like in your part of the world during this coronavirus pandemic?
As I write this, the crisis surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, having now gained pandemic proportion, is deepening by the hour.
It’s an unprecedented event for all of us and the atmosphere of uncertainty that’s sweeping the entire globe has naturally also descended upon the adult Industry. An industry that’s so dependent on trust and good health is now left to deal with the paranoia and fear that’s born of not-knowing what happens next.
Here in the United Kingdom, government guidelines on “social-distancing,” the imminent closure of schools and nurseries, and the increasing travel restrictions are effectively bringing about an enforced shutdown of production. This, however, merely echoed the consensus opinion: that a shutdown would be the strongly recommended course of action until such times as more is known about the cause and effect of the outbreak.
I hope soon the spread will be contained and things return to normality. Let’s all hope that the normality we’ll be left with resembles the normality we knew just a few months ago.
When you took a break from releasing DVDs to producing new content, what were you most looking forward to shooting?
For me, 2019 was a year of transition. I had started to notice that the overall look of my content was becoming maybe overly familiar, at least to my eyes. I had been shooting a lot at home, which is fine, and the people watching seemed to approve, but I really wanted somewhere new to work from, somewhere built for purpose, where I could change sets to suit each scene. Also, I must admit I found the thought of not having to wipe cum off the floors and walls at home everyday quite appealing.
So in December 2018 I took a lease on my Red Sign Studio (redsignstudio.com) with a plan to open a production hub for adult content, near Gatwick in England. It was a huge, empty industrial unit on farmland and the studio had to be built from scratch inside. I’ve always been a risk-taker, but this project was something else altogether. Though it required a vast investment in money, time and effort, I signed the lease and took the keys.
That was really the point where I realized I was going to have to slow production down while my team worked on the studio build.
It was ready to open in April 2019, and there was an initial period where I had to learn how best to shoot in the new space and in doing so, discovered definite issues that I’d have to overcome These issues contributed further to a delay in production.
Once I was finally able to shift up into full production mode, I commenced working on the Rebecca Smyth Man-Eater series for Television X. Those five episodes took approximately two months through primary shoots to finishing post-production.
Talk about your first new DVD out from Pulse. How did you choose which scenes to release first?
When eventually I got round to shooting my own content, I had commitments to a backlog of performers wanting to work, so it was a matter of getting everyone in the diary and then hitting it hard, to the tune of around five shoots per week. I had had a lot of requests for girl/girl scenes so I favored that flavor through till Christmas, but having committed to producing my first all-anal DVD, I bought a new douche bulb, topped my lube stocks, ‘puckered-up’ and shot those movies around the same time.
The resulting anal scenes make up my Granny Butt Fuck DVD, which is the first Lacey Starr Productions release under my new deal with U.S.-based Pulse Distribution. I’m really excited to be working with everyone there, and to be able to work with Danny Gorman again, with whom I’d always had a great working relationship during my time with previous distributor Juicy. I’m a great listener and a quick learner, and Danny’s advice and guidance has always been gratefully received.
What type of content sells the best for you?
I’ve always found creating and marketing porn to be a game of contrasts, certainly at the more niche end of things. So for me, scenes where I appear with young guys or girls will do better than my scenes with more mature performers. Similarly, when I work with black or Asian people they generally out-sell the scenes I shoot with white guys and girls. My best-selling content has always been the interracial/cougar, the cheating wife etc. It’s a happy coincidence, then, that my top selling material reflects my own personal taste in both sex and pornography. I’m very fortunate, there’s not much I’ve made that hasn’t worked out well, for myself and for others. If everyone has a good time and we all make money then I’m doing something right.
You have several Twitter accounts. How do you use these to interact with fans?
Then of course, it’s a question of promoting the content, where an essential tool, or necessary evil (depending which way you look at it) has been social media, in particular Twitter.
I originally started with one Twitter account @LaceyStarrxxx, but then having fallen foul of their somewhat ‘selective’ rules and regulations on a couple of occasions I decided to create a back-up account @LaceyStarrxxxUK. I’m lucky enough to have a great following on each and receive tons of messages and wonderful support. I have several fan-run profiles which I find tremendously flattering and also a tad surreal, and there are two in particular that I try to support in return, as much as possible, as they always do such a great job in promoting me and my brand.
Unfortunately, but inevitably, I’ve acquired some unwanted fake profiles along the way too, but thankfully, my fans have been very quick to spot and report them for me.
I now run a new Twitter profile called @BustyWhammers which is for people who like yours truly, simply adore tits. I’ve always had a real fascination and attraction to women’s breasts and I now own the domain name whammers.com on which I plan to open a website purely for boob-lovers like myself hopefully later this year or early next. Call it a labor of love!
I have persisted, and opened yet another Instagram account, but their rather draconian rules and scatter-gun application of them, doesn’t sit particularly well with the adult industry and I have no doubt they’ll close me down (for the fifth time!) as soon as the profile starts to become remotely worthwhile in promotional terms.
I do genuinely enjoy an engagement with my social media followers, I rely on their feedback and value their opinions because ultimately, they make up a good percentage of my ‘end-users’ so I always try answer all my messages personally.
I really don’t understand it when I see other performers moaning about guys who send dick pics either, I mean, come on! we post countless pictures and videos of our bits online and then you’re shocked and terribly offended because a guy sends you a photo of his dick. Give me a fucking break! I get hundreds of dick pics and I love it, I even get some guys asking me to rate their dicks for them, which I’m always more than happy to do, though they’re not always happy with the rating I give, but hey ho! I’m an honest woman, who sees a LOT of dicks! so don’t ask if you don’t really want to know the truth about your cock!
You also sell your own content on a couple of platforms. Do you produce different content for these sites? Do you do customs?
Having long since accepted my place in the industry as very much a niche performer, I realised the best way for me to earn a living from porn was to create several small streams of revenue by selling my content on clip sites. This progressed to DVD, VOD, PPV & subscription broadcast and now ultimately to my official website laceystarr.com. I occasionally sell non-exclusive bulk content directly to various sites and distributors around the world and although I tend to try and stick to shooting the kind of content which has proven popular, I will sometimes vary it to meet specific demands and trends.
I do shoot custom videos for clients and have done for several years, however it doesn’t represent a huge part of my business mainly because I simply haven’t had time to better explore the market. It’s something I’ve been in talks over with the team at ARL Cash, so you can expect to see a custom option, maybe even a new independent website, focussing on the sale and production of exclusive and non-exclusive custom movies.
How long has ARL Cash been operating your website? What do you like best about working with them?
ARL Cash built the laceystarr.com site, which launched in late 2018. I have a great working relationship with Laurel and her team there. We meet up a couple of times a year and have weekly late night Skype meetings to discuss the site and how to improve and develop it. I first met Laurel back in 2015 at AVN and we hit it off immediately so it’s especially lovely that we’ve finally been able to join forces on a working project.
How much cam work do you do? What do you like best about camming?
The sheer volume of work created by running these various profiles, pages and sites—and the resulting time spent making content for them—can have an impact on other parts of my work. Camming, for instance, can be one of my favorite parts of the job, but sadly it’s so seldom at present that I actually find time to actually do it. I have some brilliant cam clients too and every time I manage to get on they’ll come join me for some fun. I used to cam until 4am, seven days a week when I first started my career in adult, but these days I’m lucky if I get on for a few hours each week. I have been asked several times if I’d consider doing a weekly cam show through the website, and if we can set it up then I’ll happily do it exclusively for subscribers.
What advice do you have for older women who may not be blessed with your healthy sex drive? Some are experiencing lower hormonal levels, which can affect enjoyment of sex. Do you recommend any sex toys or lubricants in particular?
I get asked from time to time what advice I can offer mature girls who are experiencing a dip in their sex drives.
It’s hard to put a finger on exact causes without addressing each person’s situation individually and there are no real set rules and no blanket cures when it comes to this as we all function differently.
Issues may often be hormone based, particularly in women of a certain age, so have your levels regularly checked and treated accordingly. However, if the problem is not a physical one, I often advise women to follow the same methods that worked for me several years ago.
I watched lots of porn. I found whatever type best suited my mood and eventually a preferred type that aroused me more than others, and I proceeded to watch as much of it as I could. I masturbated daily, sometimes for hours on end, discovering new types of porn and finding new ways to reach orgasm by using different toys and implements. The classic dildo, the “rampant rabbit,” then of course the “Magic Wand”—all earned their secret hiding place in my bedside cabinet.
I soon progressed to the point where I felt curious enough to take a younger lover, and trust me this is incredibly simple to do. Next time you’re out and about and a good-looking young guy flirts with you, take him home and fuck him. If you can’t use your home, use a hotel room, or the car, whatever. Just do it. Suddenly, I was a 45-year-old married woman hiding condoms in her handbag … just in case.
It’s odd, but when you find yourself having regular sex with gorgeous, energetic, young guys, you start to feel infinitely more desirable. Your confidence grows, and soon you feel ready to try more and more new experiences. I attended sex clubs, I had a relationship with a woman, I started hosting swingers parties etc., and before long found myself blissfully divorced and being reborn at 53 as LaceyStarr.
Though that’s not in any way to encourage you to take things as far as I did!
As a former therapist, do you have tips for couples seeking to invigorate their romantic lives?
You may after all, be happily married and just looking to fire up your relationship a bit. In which case I would simply advise you to talk openly about sex every day, be 100 percent honest and 100 percent non-judgmental. Let each other know your innermost fantasies and try to talk frankly about how you’re feeling before, during and even after sex. There are so many weird, wild and wonderful ways to achieve orgasm, so take time to explore all the ways that work best for you.
It’s important to remember wherever possible to separate sex and love in your thinking, as they are almost entirely different things.
