Riley Reid is one of the world’s most successful porn stars and lives in a $4.8 million mansion, yet she wouldn’t recommend her career to others.
In an emotional YouTube video, the 31-year-old (real name Ashley Mathews), admitted that her job had destroyed her relationship with her family and caused a range of issues in her personal life.
“A lot of times when people ask me if they should do porn, I tell them no, I tell them that it makes life really hard, it makes dating really hard, it makes your family life really hard, it makes intimacy hard,” she says in the 2020 clip which has recently resurfaced on Twitter.
“If you're putting yourself out there and the world is now judging you, you have to be OK with being shamed every day of your life.”
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Mathews, went on to say that the abuse she suffered had even put her off starting a family of her own.
“I don't even want to have children because I do porn, because I'm worried [about] the way that people will treat my child,” she explained.
She then acknowledged that her mother had been supportive at the start of her career – “She kind of just let me do whatever” – but things soon turned sour.
“When I started to set these boundaries, not giving her money or things like that - it made our relationship a bit more difficult and almost toxic and so it sucks.
“I don't have a mum anymore, I don't talk to her, I miss having a mum. I feel like you can't rewind and you can't go back. I don't have that relationship with her anymore. I don't ever think I will and that bums me out. It bums me out a lot.”
Mathews said her career had also driven a wedge between her “religious” father and her.
“Recently I wanted to go visit him and he said that I can't go visit because his wife - my stepmum - does not want me there,” she said. “I'm not allowed to go visit my dad anymore because my stepmum doesn't like that I do porn.”
But, she continued: “When I was like well can we go get coffee or breakfast, he was like 'I don't want to be seen in public with you' and that just f***ing hurt so bad and it sucks.”
Wiping back tears, she concluded: “I’ve lost my family, I don't talk to my brothers or my sisters. I think that they all kind of tried to take advantage of me and stuff or they're just like my dad – don't want to be around me.”
And yet, despite her reservations about having children, Mathews and her husband Pasha Petkuns became parents to a baby girl in November last year.
The 31-year-old’ is loving motherhood, if the heart-warming photos she’s posted to Instagram are anything to go by.
However, understandably, she’s not loving the backlash her defenceless child has received.
“The amount of people who leave mean comments about my baby is crazy to me,” she said in a video posted earlier this month.
“Grow up. Stop being mean to a baby.”
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