The adult entertainment business has its downsides, and sometimes a performer or producer of pornography will try to break into more mainstream work: maybe for the better reputation and recognition, maybe to make more money. It's also possible that a present mainstream star has a past in porn that they consider an Old Shame.
Sometimes the changeover goes swimmingly, but in other cases, the character's past in porn comes back to haunt them: Contractual Purity standards can be difficult if not impossible to navigate. On the third hand, however, if their past in porn is exposed, the character might decide there is No Such Thing as Bad Publicity and use the controversy to drive eyeballs to their new business.
This trope often overlaps with I Was Young and Needed the Money, where a character brushes off their participation in an Old Shame with the excuse of financial woes. May lead to Once Done, Never Forgotten. Compare to Former Child Star, where a child actor runs into problems transitioning to full-time acting as an adult.
See Tamer and Chaster, where a new version of a work has reduced sexual content compared to the original. Also see Porn Names, for cases where a performer uses different Stage Names for their porn work.
As this relates to sex work, No Real Life Examples, Please! If you absolutely must discuss a Real Life mainstream creator's past in porn, try He Also Did.
Examples
- Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says: Norush dreams of drawing Shōnen manga, but an editor friend advised him to start as an eromanga artist first. This gets deconstructed later on—Norush gets a job offer from a shōnen magazine, but that magazine's editor wants to capitalize on Norush's fame in Hentai and asks Norush to plan for an ero-comedy, a genre that the latter dislikes even more than Hentai. This causes the negotiation to fall through, and Norush needs to rethink what he really wants to draw, so he'd still be drawing Hentai—for a different publication, that is.
- Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: In a Story Arc beginning in chapter 15, AV director Victor Iba tries to break into mainstream filmmaking with a martial arts action-schlock film titled Fist of the Tokyo She-Beast, using a bunch of martial arts-capable idols including main character Haebaru Misora (a gravure model trained in classical karate) to make up most of the cast. Goujima Sara, who directs and acts in extreme porn and practices capoeira, also performs in the film as a Stripperiffic Elite Mook, and at Misora's suggestion, Iba also hires some of her coworkers as Fanservice Extras.
- Genshiken: discussed once at ComiKET, when the club go to see a panel featuring the voice actors for the new Kujibiki Unbalance adaptation, one of whom also starred in the original adult title the show is based on.
- I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying: Mayotama starts off the series as a yaoi doujinshi author. While his work is popular, he knows that he'll never be able to get his current work published in the mainstream, and decides to start writing Shōnen works instead.
- Kara of Rokyn: Jara starred in porno videos before becoming a wrestler. They were relatively softcore—and she really needed the income—but she isn't pleased to hear they might hurt her chances of making the leap into legitimate acting.
- Amagi Brilliant Park: Subverted. A young woman coming to work at the family-friendly park says that she used to do "AV" (a common abbreviation in Japan for Adult Videos), causing those interviewing her to believe that this trope is in effect. However, it turns out that she actually meant "animal videos", and of a cute, innocuous sort at that.
- Castle (2009): In "Death Gone Crazy", a sleazy film producer named Beau Randolph is found murdered. He'd been introduced in a prior episode as the owner of a company that produced and sold a "Girls Gone Wild"-type entertainment. However, the investigation reveals that he was planning to shut down his porn company and was trying to invest in a wholesome family entertainment company. The head of the family company, Ronald Armstrong, was afraid Randolph was trying to use the clean image of that brand to peddle his tawdry wares. But it turns out that Randolph had learned that a one-night stand had resulted in pregnancy, and that the baby was going to be a daughter. The young woman he'd been with was, ironically, the daughter of Armstrong, and Randolph was reevaluating his whole life now that he found out he was going to be a father. His partner, who knew none of this, killed him when he learned that he was shutting down the company instead of turning it over to him.
- Discussed on How I Met Your Mother, where Ted says one of the earmarks of porn is a "delusional girl who thinks it's a stepping stone to mainstream success".
- Law & Order: In "Aria", an actress commits suicide as her mother was pushing her to do porn so that she could later invoke this trope and use the controversy to bolster her career, modeling after "other famous actresses" who had done the same (whether for legal reasons or pragmatism, no actual examples are named in the episode). The mother is put on trial for murder for basically driving the girl to suicide when she didn't want to be involved in porn at all. Seeing a video "performance" that served as a suicide note actually swayed the jury to conviction.
- Ménage à 3: Amber Larose is a former porn actress who is trying to get a career as a mainstream actress, though she and Dillon had the misfortune of working under Jerkass producer Nathan (all too literally, as it turned out). Fortunately, (with a little help from Dillon), she was able to turn the tables and nab both a favorable contract and a free apartment out of the deal. She was known as "Amber-Amber" when working in porn, but she now tries to dissuade people from calling her that.
- Sequential Art: Early strips have Alpha Bitch Hilary Locke working for a prestigious lingerie company, so she visits Art's marketing firm to launch an ad campaign. Once she discovers Art is flatmates with Kat Vance, she switches to complete Jerkass mode. Fortunately, Pip recognizes the name, and he exploits "the Internet never forgets," uncovering Hilary's past in the porn industry, going by the name Gabrielle Goodtime. Not long after, Hilary gets dismissed from the lingerie maker.
