A version of this feature appears in the July issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition.
LOS ANGELES—Sophie Sparks started live camming because she recognized the potential to make some quick cash without thinking about it turning into a profession.
“And I tried it and I was like, ‘I’ll do it until I don’t need to,’” Sparks recalls. “But I had so much fun. I just fell in love with it. I was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to be doing.’”
She tried a couple other cam sites before settling down with Germany-based MyDirtyHobby, where she has been for more than a year. Recently, she also joined Jasmin.
“Maybe I didn’t go in with the most inspiring reasons but I loved it,” Sparks continues. “I had a blast. I made friends. I still talk to them.
“I felt confident, which was never really how I felt. I was always very, very shy. But I’ve gotten so much better at being able to talk to people one on one or even in groups.”
The 21-year-old performer says her transition to doing girl/girl porn a couple years ago was similar.
“I kind of got curious,” Sparks says.
Now she tells AVN the friendships she’s formed through porn “are better friends than the people I grew up with.”
“We talk about everything,” Sparks says. “I got into it for maybe the most lame of reasons but I stayed.”
Her decision to stick around paid off in more ways than one as she won her first AVN Award in January less than two dozen movies into her adult performing career.
Sparks tasted AVN gold for her electric outing in Bacchanalia, which received the Best Foreign-Shot All-Girl Sex Scene honor at the 37th annual AVN Awards Show.
She triumphed along with her co-stars Amirah Adara, Anna de Ville, Tiffany Tatum and Misha Cross, who also produced and directed the all-girl title for Evil Angel Films.
“Wow, I was so taken aback by that,” Sparks says. “I never expected that at all. And when I saw that I was like jumping up and down. I was so excited. I had a little dance party for myself.
“I was messaging the other girls who were in the scene like, ‘Oh my god congratulations!’”
An American who has been living abroad for almost three years, Sparks says it was JulModels owner Julia Grandi who referred her to Lucky Red, a cinematographer based in Madrid, Spain, who collaborates closely with Misha Cross and recommended her for the Bacchanalia scene.
“Him and Misha both reached out to me,” Sparks says. “I was super excited because a lot of my scenes are on the softer side, which I like, but this one was a little more passionate. I really love passion. That’s like my big thing.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, what do you like in sex?’ I’m like, ‘As long as it’s done with passion it’s fine with me.’”
Sparks continues, “I got to meet so many girls that I looked up to that I was like, ‘You’re kidding me? Wow.’ It was awesome. I feel very lucky to have been cast in that. They’re all great girls. We had so much fun.”
Sparks says she spends the bulk of her time camming on MyDirtyHobby or ManyVids but she is also taking business courses at a local college—even though her classes have gone online for the moment because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There is not a lot of porn being shot where I am,” Sparks says. “Mostly I’m just doing the camming, which I love. The porn honestly is a small percentage of everything that I do.
“I definitely want to do more scenes, that’s for sure. And as far as boy/girl, we’ll see. I’m trying to be as strategic about this as possible. I was only doing professional solos for a while.”
Sparks has shot for top studios such as Marc Dorcel, X-Art, Nubiles, Twistys, Mofos and CherryPimps.
She has not ruled out boy/girl scenes in the future if she felt the demand was there.
“And honestly, I think I would start with my own content being boy/girl, so I would sell it directly,” she suggests. “It’s not been ruled out but I am in no rush.”
Sparks reveals she has always been attracted to women, but she didn’t realize that until after she left the U.S.
“I had an epiphany. One night I was in Bali and this random girl came up and she kissed me and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve definitely been bisexual my whole life and I just didn’t know it,’” Sparks says. “I don’t know what it was, but I should’ve gotten her number. She was cute…”
Sparks, who is from a multi-cultural home, started college in fall of 2019, leading a nomadic lifestyle for the past three years.
“This is my fifth country in Europe that I’m living in. And before that I was living in China for a year,” she says. “My family has always been very open about different cultures.
“My mom was not even raised in the United States and my relatives seriously live all over the world. I don’t know why I was always just very fascinated with all Asian cultures.
“I loved anime when I was a kid and any classes I could take about Asian culture I wanted to take. So the first chance I got to go to China I was like I’m going and I went. And I studied Mandarin for a year before leaving and went and had a great time and then I was like, ‘OK, done with China, but I’m not done traveling so.”
Sparks, who can speak a little bit of Chinese, stayed in Shanghai when she was there.
“I highly recommend it. There was a lot of partying when I was there and the ex-pat groups are just really great. Everything’s just so easy; you can find anything you want there,” she explains. “It’s cheap in some ways, expensive in others. It’s just fun.
"It’s so lively and a lot of people say, ‘Well there’s too many people.’ There’s a lot of people but it’s amazing. It’s like a school of fish. They just flow so perfectly, so it doesn’t feel like a lot, I don’t know. They have a great transportation system; I just had a blast.”
Sparks worked a waitress and photographer—she’s shot weddings and graduations—before she got into adult in 2018. She says she hasn’t been taking a lot of photos as of late.
“I miss it a lot. I love taking photos. I was in fairly high demand,” Sparks says. “I honestly don’t know why I stopped. Every once in a while I take my camera out and I walk around and take pictures of whatever I think is interesting.”
The lockdown in her European city is “a bit intense,” she says.
“Every time we go outside we have to sign a paper that states where we’re going, how long we’re gonna be gone, the name of our mother and father. It’s crazy,” Sparks says.
When she isn’t working, Sparks enjoys a variety of hobbies that include playing musical instruments, drawing, painting, knitting, embroidery and cooking.
“All I have are hobbies. I am a girl that loves a hobby,” she jokes. “I play the violin since forever. I played for a long time. I haven’t played it much recently so I’ve gotten pretty bad but the other day I took it out and I was like I’ve really gotta start playing this again. I play ukulele. Because of coronavirus I started playing guitar two weeks ago.”
When she paints, she uses mostly water color.
“Especially when I was traveling around Asia I had the cool water color brushes that are tubes and you can keep the water inside of the brush,” Sparks explains. “They’re really great for traveling. And I would bring those with me and I would fill them up with natural water from wherever I was.
“So if I was in Shanghai I would go to The Bund and put my watercolor brush in it and fill it with the water from The Bund and then I would paint the view. And I was doing that and I was just collecting all this water. So even if I couldn’t paint then, I’d be like, ‘OK, I’m going to take a picture, this is what I’m gonna paint. I’m gonna paint it when I get home. Here’s some beautiful scenery from Osaka, Japan.’ So I usually paint landscapes.”
Sparks picked up her cooking skills from “my mama.”
“She’s an excellent cook and she taught us and she was also busy growing up, so I would have to cook on the weekends,” Sparks says.
Photography courtesy of Marc Dorcel
