Mia Khalifa has opened up on the moment she realised she had to leave behind 'normal life' after becoming 'accidentally infamous' when she starred in a controversial porn video.
Now 31 years old, Khalifa became an overnight adult industry star after she starred in a controversial film where she was wearing a hijab while performing sexually explicit content.
Khalifa, originally from Lebanon, was sent death threats after the video went viral, and the Islamic State even photoshopped an image to show her being beheaded.
The video polarised opinion, but also inadvertently made Khalifa become one of the biggest stars on PornHub, with her name the most searched-for on the adult content platform.
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Recording only a few more pornographic films, Khalifa left the adult industry just three months after making her debut. Despite retiring in 2014, she was the most searched adult star in 2016 and 2018, showing the impact she had on the online world.
Fast-forward to 2024, and she has made millions on OnlyFans, making an estimated $6.2 million (£4.6 million) a month from her posts.
But it wasn't that easy, Khalifa revealed in a recent interview with The New York Times.
Speaking to the US paper, the OF star explained the moment she realised 'normal life' for her was over.
And it wasn't a nice experience by any means.
"I was working at a law office. Anyone who would come in, there would be whispers in the waiting room," Khalifa said.
"I started to feel like a distraction — and uncomfortable. That’s when I realised, this isn’t going to change. This isn’t going to get better."
On top of this, she said that her female colleagues changed their approach, while the men treated her like a 'zoo animal'.
She said: "I don’t like the women that I work with looking at me a certain way, and I especially don’t like the men looking at me in a certain way because it’s like a zoo animal.
"So I reopened social media, and I decided to try to be an influencer and a public person if that was the fate that I had sealed for myself."
On the viral porn film that made her a worldwide name, Khalifa says she was 'pressured' to perform in it, with the video 'exploiting the fact that I was Arabic and spoke Arabic, and I went through with it'.
She said: "Not long after, I would say maybe a couple hours after it premiered, the avalanche started. Every news outlet picked it up, and everybody had an opinion.
"I was completely out of control of my image, my reputation. I feel like a lot of people have slutty phases when they’re 20, 21. Unfortunately, mine was in 4K."
The experience of the adult industry impacted her mental health, Khalifa revealed when speaking to Louis Theroux for The Louis Theroux Podcast on Spotify.
"The reason I used to have a lot of trouble talking about it is because I was extremely clouded by shame," Khalifa said. "I used to have a visceral reaction to even hearing the name Mia and knowing that if someone is calling me by that name, they are seeing me in a way that I don’t want to be seen in.
"But that had a lot more to do with my mental health than it does about the bigger picture of things. I think that nine years of therapy is a lot and it's not because of what I went through in the industry."
Topics: Adult Industry, Mia Khalifa, PornHub, US News, OnlyFans
Tom Earnshaw