Carter Cruise Talks to Cosmo About Porn and Life Beyond It

CYBERSPACE—The online version of Cosmopolitan magazine today posted the thoughts of AVN Best New Starlet nominee and Airerose brand spokesperson Carter Cruise, and her revelations about her life before porn and what she plans to do afterwards make interesting reading. Cruise begins by noting that she's always wanted to be an entertainer, and probably wouldn't even have gone to college if it hadn't been to follow the guy she was dating at the time—but her course of study in psychology seems to have given her some insights into what it takes to have sex in front of the cameras, and how she expects that to lead to bigger and better things in the future. "My whole life I've been fascinated with branding and I came up with this idea to create this brand of 'Carter Cruise' where I could do everything I wanted to do," she explained. "I wanted to write, I wanted to act, I wanted to make music, I wanted to do fashion. I was like, 'How can I do all of these things in one lifetime?' Porn was the first step because it gave me the capital and the connections to not only build my brand but also to lay the foundations for other creative things that I wanted to get involved in." But it wasn't easy. First, Cruise had to get over the idea that she'd "been living my life for everyone else and it was making me so incredibly unhappy," but after spending a semester away from school and thinking about her options, she had what she describes as a "breakthrough" after talking to an industry photographer. "When he was telling me about the type of people who were in the industry, those people sounded like me," she stated. So Cruise wound up posing for her first topless photos with that lensman—but she wasn't really happy about it. "I've always been very modest and very insecure about my body," she admitted. "I took those photos and I was so scared and nervous and felt insecure, like I looked fat. But then I saw the photos and I felt amazing. Being sexy on camera, I felt very connected. Once I didn't have that fear anymore I just decided to dive in the whole way." But even while shooting her first sex scene, Cruise was nervous, and got even more so when she saw the performance being given by her partner in the scene, a veteran actress on the verge of retirement. "We went in and I felt like, 'I know how to have sex, I'm good in bed!' but then I saw this girl having sex and I thought, 'Holy shit, I cannot fuck like that,' she said. "Fifteen minutes in I thought, 'This is a huge mistake,' and I was almost about to cry. I was just thinking about how I made this epic mistake and it was so embarrassing. But I thought,' Well they're paying me to be here and all these people are depending on me, you have to go in and finish the scene and you can fly home tomorrow.' So I just dove in like I do with everything and let go and stopped caring, and the rest of the night was a whirlwind of amazingness and I had such a great time." But while her parents know what she's doing and have been very supportive, Cruise remains troubled about how her personal life may be affected by her career in the adult biz, noting that, "Guys don't understand it," but nonetheless, she intends to be honest with whatever guy she does find: "I don't want to lie about my job." All in all, it's quite an insightful piece for a 23-year-old, touching on her compllicated friendship with the new "college girl" on the block, Belle Knox, and the upcoming release of two songs she's written—and how she expects her adult career will affect her future. "I was 100 percent aware of the stigma of porn when I made the decision to do it," she wrote. "What I'm doing is risky and I totally understand that and I understood the risk when I came up with this concept in my head. But then I thought, everything to me is risk and reward. The risk is that people would look at me differently because I do porn. It's always going to be that way. But the reward is that I will be able to get places so much more quickly." The full Cosmopolitan piece can be read here.