Lana Rhoades is the Most Popular Porn Actress of 2021

"When I stopped filming porn, I had maybe $ 100,000 in my bank account. Today, I'm a multimillionaire," Lana Rhoades admitted a few months ago in a podcast that uncovered the dark side of the pornography industry and illustrated that filming the most brutal sex scenes doesn't necessarily lead to fabulous wealth these days.

Amara Maple, also known as Lana Rhoades, is not just any random porn actress. In 2021, according to statistics from the largest pornographic portal, Pornhub, she became the most sought-after name on the entire platform. Therefore, she can rightly be crowned today's most popular porn star.

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However, she did not only gain her fame thanks to undressing in front of the cameras for years. She also shot some extreme scenes, which she's ashamed of.

Thanks to a few factors, she became the most popular porn actress at Pornhub third year in a row. Her current influencer status, closeness to Logan Paul, the fact that she managed to end her career as a porn actress at the age of 25, spending a year in prison are a few examples. On top of that, she even got pregnant, and her baby is due in January next year.

Grew up in a Christian family, ended up in prison

Lana Rhoades was born and raised in a Christian family in Chicago, where she dreamed of making it as an actress or singer. As a little girl, she realized that one day she'd probably have to leave her hometown and go to Los Angeles to follow her dreams, but fate arranged her life differently.

As a teenager, she became involved in crime through her boyfriend at the time and ended up in a juvenile correctional facility. The judge's verdict had sent 16-year-old Lana to jail for five years.

Five years in jail“I was guilty by complicity. I had a boyfriend. And since gang violence is really thriving in Chicago, if you get caught with people who are committing a crime, and there are more than four of you, you all are accused of the same act. They robbed houses, stole, and I've spent a lot of time with them,” the influencer said about her childhood in the Tap In podcast with Harry Jowsey, whom you may know from the first series of the Too Hot to Handle reality show on Netflix.

"I was accused, convicted, and I've spent one year in jail as a teenager. I was supposed to be there until I was 21 years old. I never stole anything, didn't make a single dime. I was young and the only girl, so they put me out the window to unlock doors for them and let them in," Lana explained in an open conversation. She was finally released from jail after a year of good behavior.

She briefly dabbled in lesbian lifestyle behind bars

Getting locked up at the age of sixteen and re-integrating into society at seventeen will leave scars on any teenager. Lana Rhoades has repeatedly admitted that her imprisonment triggered anxiety and panic attacks, but her family had her back.

Meanwhile, Rhoades worked part-time in Chicago at the famous Tilted Kilt pub, where she spent many months earning a living. She was already a cheerleader in high school, so she believed in her Hollywood potential. However, her imprisonment thwarted her plans a little. What's more, she began experimenting sexually with women behind bars and even fell in love multiple times.

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“I had a few girlfriends. At the age of only sixteen, these were my first moments in such an environment. When I went to jail, I had a boyfriend, and I said that girls don’t attract me. Still, when everyone around you is engaged in lesbian contact, lesbian relationships start to feel normal,” Rhoades explains why she tried to establish romantic relationships with women in the Tap In podcast.

As a teenager, she found out that she wasn't gay, so she didn't return to same-sex dating after leaving prison.

She wanted to get her life back on track after being released from prison, so she decided to study at Oakton Community College. She didn't finish her studies because she decided to give the pornography industry a chance in early 2016, informs Stars Unfolded.

Her vision of making a living using her own body was more attractive to her than continuing her studies, which she pursued mainly to satisfy her family's desires.

She got into porn as a 19-year-old, shortly after getting married

The transformation from a juvenile delinquent to a student to a budding porn actress didn't take long. Shortly after her nineteenth birthday, she made her debut in an erotic film. Her blossoming career didn't prevent her from getting married, though.

As an eighteen-year-old bride, she said yes to a groom who was nine years older. Jon, known on Instagram as BigDad_87, took care of his new wife and the bond eventually lasted for five years. However, the porn career eroded the trust and understanding in the relationship. 

Although Rhoades always said in her interviews that her career had never been an obstacle in her relationships, she acknowledged it contributed to the breakdown of her marriage. "I’ve had boyfriends while I was shooting porn, after porn. Now, guys are willing and ready to wife me up," she laughed in the Call Her Daddy podcast.

"It’s just not true that no one wants to date you because you have done that," the influencer explained. She heard from industry colleagues that they had problems finding potential partners during their active career, but her experience was different, reports the IB Times.

Rhoades stated that her relationship with her first husband was gradually eroded by insecurity and that he could no longer look at the scenes she was shooting without getting angry.

Playboy dreams coming true

Although the porn industry helped Rhoades break up the marriage, she wouldn't accept that her career destroyed her as a person for the longest time. In her mind, she always went back to the age of thirteen or fourteen, watching the Girls Next Door reality show about the lives of models working for Playboy, living in the villa of the legendary Hugh Hefner.

"I always hid in my room watching the show and thought that the lives of those women looked amazing. That's exactly what I wanted to do once I grew up. It was the first time I had the urge to do modeling. I thought the Playboy girls were so attractive. I also wanted to be in Playboy," said Rhoades.

This dream came true in 2021 when Playboy chose her for an extensive profile interview. Thanks to that, the popularity of the young porn actress increased sharply, and it didn't take long for her to become one of the most popular actresses in adult films on the Internet. Her photos have appeared in Playboy in the past, although without any significant accompanying text and interviews.

In the Playboy interview, Rhoades revealed that she had only worked in porn for eight months on a full-time basis, according to her calculations. Every few weeks or months, she'd consider a new film or video that appealed to her or offered attractive conditions. Since the end of 2017, porn was no longer a priority for her.

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The nastiest scene that still makes her gag

Working in porn full-time has undoubtedly left a bruise on the young woman's psyche. In her podcast, Three Girls One Kitchen, Rhoades admitted that producers and directors were putting increasing pressure on her to shoot wilder and more disgusting scenes a few months ago.

These pressures were the worst in the first years after coming to the porn industry because, according to her, brutal porn where the actresses were often humiliated was the most popular.

“Honestly, sometimes I feel like I refuse to accept some of the things I’ve done. I even tried to talk to a therapist before shooting a rough scene,” Rhoades explained in the podcast. She even described to the audience and the listeners what was asked of her at the time.

"In short, this guy was holding a bowl and suffocating me until I vomited into it. Then he peed into that bowl and told me to drink it during the scene, and I didn't know how to say no. It was one of the most disgusting scenes," she concluded.

Today, she doesn't accuse anyone of forcing her to make such scenes, because according to her own words, she had to learn how to say no and refuse to shoot scenes that were against her beliefs.

Pornstar turned into a millionaire influencer

Lana Rhoades gave up her career in porn when she met an influencer a few years ago who had managed to collect three million followers. The porn actress didn't specify which influencer was the one to open her eyes, but it was then that she discovered that while she was getting paid $1,500 for a filmed scene, this person earned $15,000 for a single Instagram post.

"Why are you making so much more than me?" she asked, and the conversation revealed that Rhoades had tremendous potential, yet untapped. Lana ended her career in porn in 2018, although she returned to it briefly in 2020 thanks to an exclusive contract with the Brazzers studio.

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Today, she makes millions instead of hundreds of thousands thanks to her profile on the Onlyfans platform and promotions on Instagram. Still, she has found many more sources of income in recent years that she doesn't want to talk about publicly.

Her baby dad's name remains a mysteryThe YouTuber Logan Paul, with whom Rhoades spent the last two years, has contributed significantly to her massive increase in popularity.

The influencer dated Mike Majlak, a close friend of Logan Paul's, but the pair called it quits at the end of 2020. Today, Rhoades has more than 16.6 million followers on Instagram. From time to time, she makes a video on her YouTube channel. In the meantime, she's already directing her focus towards cryptocurrencies and the NFT world.

She is due to give birth to her first child this January, but she still refuses to tell the world who the father of her future offspring is. There's speculation on social networks, whether it's Majlak, someone unknown, or maybe even the basketball player Kevin Durant, with whom Rhoades was on a date around the time of the conception. Lana herself does not comment on the speculations.

She moved from Los Angeles back to her family in Chicago for the time being. In a video with her former boyfriend Majlak, she stated that she'd remove her iconic rose tattoo from her butt. "No one will see my ass anymore. I'm a mother now," she laughed.