Larkin Love is nothing but serious when it comes to her work, but as soon as she turns on that camera, we never know what to expect from this gorgeous cosplay queen.
With almost a decade of performing and producing experience under her belt, we couldn’t pass up the chance to chat up the lovely Larkin and pick her brain on how she won three awards in one year, where she seeks inspiration, and how she became such a savvy entrepreneur.
Keep on reading — this kinky gal’s a lot to say!
How did you start performing and producing porn?
I have been in the industry since February of 2011. I started out in the sex industry as a stripper and I danced through the summers to support myself when I was a student. Those were some of the best days of my life. My time on the pole was so positive, exciting, lucrative, and liberating, that when I left school, I decided to take the plunge and do porn. I moved to LA with nothing but a car full of clothes and my computer.
At first, the mainstream porn industry outright rejected me. Two agents couldn’t get me work and 40 go-sees told me I was “unmarketable.” It was difficult to deal with so much rejection, but deep down, I knew they were wrong.
Another model introduced me to digital clip marketplaces so I decided to start making my own porn and sell it online. My boyfriend at the time bought me an HD handicam and I started shooting my own clips. The rest, as they say, is history. Since I’m an indie porn star and producer, as soon as Modelhub went live, I knew I wanted to be a part of that marketplace right from the start.
Tell us about your upbringing and how it's influenced your work.
I was born in Boston and lived there until I was almost 10 years old. After that, my family moved constantly. I found myself going to different schools in different states, three to four times a year. It was very stressful for me as a child. It taught me how to be resilient and adaptive. Plenty of people I meet are terrified of change. They cling to a set of expectations and identities and if even one of them shifts, they freak out. Not me, I was the “new girl” so many times as a kid, I lost any apprehension I had toward losing everything I was used to and starting from square one. I grew up having no fear of trying something different or moving to another city to pursue better opportunities. It’s served me well as an adult.
My parents and I parted ways when I turned 18. This was before I entered the adult industry in any way. Believe it or not, I’m grateful for their lack of support throughout my childhood and beyond. I became self-reliant and independent. This mindset led me to entrepreneurship, financial responsibility, and living boldly for myself on my own terms.
When you have no life preserver waiting for you on the sidelines, you can either sink or swim. I didn’t just learn how to swim — I became a goddamn mermaid.
You’ve won many awards including Best Clip Artist in 2018, how did that feel? What do you think makes you stand out?
When I first started shooting my own clips and selling them online, I made a checklist of milestones that would indicate success in my chosen career. Right at the top was “win at least one award.” In 2018, I won three and was nominated for seven! It’s a beautiful feeling to look back at that list and realize how much I’ve honored the wishes and intent of my past self. I’m living the dream. Now I have a new list with even loftier goals for which I strive toward daily. The sky's the limit!
The real source of my success is my incredible fan base! My fans are everything to me. I’ve never met a more fascinating and diverse group of people in my life. It’s amazing to think I can bring so many different individuals happiness and entertainment with what I create. I love my fans and I consider each and every one of them my friend.
My success isn’t magical. I didn’t go viral. I wasn’t “discovered.” It’s the result of hard work. My career is my passion, my artistic expression, my business, and my baby wrapped up into one. I put many hours into what I do and I love every minute of it.
We never know what character you're going to take on next — how do you get into character before pressing "record?"
Cosplay characters aside, I’m a different character in every video. I don’t have any “stock” characters waiting in the wings of my imagination, maybe archetypes, but no characters.
Every single video I produce is acted extemporaneously. I don’t use scripts at all and I don’t plan my scenes. Every turn of the story and every spoken line is 100% improvisation. It sounds crazy, but that’s just how I work. I turn on the camera and just become someone else for a while and tell a story.
I don’t have a background in acting or anything like that, so I’m not sure how this talent came to be. It’s a thrill to exercise it on camera!
Are there any fetishes on your bucket list you’d like to try you haven’t done yet?
I want to make a video with an artificially intelligent android. If I don’t get to do this during my lifetime, then every science fiction movie that ever made me feel tingly in the pants has lied to me, and I can’t accept that. I want Gigolo Joe. I want Bishop. I want Roy Batty. I want Data. Does some lab in Silicon Valley need a human test subject for this kind of thing? I’ll volunteer.
Where do you look for inspiration for your videos?
Porn is more than just jerk-off material. I believe it’s a genre of film in its own right and the storyline and setting matters. The acting matters, even in simple scenarios.
I find inspiration for my work all over the place. Believe it or not, horror movies have taught me many lessons about pacing, timing, mood, and acting delivery. Horror and eroticism aren’t that different; they’re both forms of visceral excitement that drive humans on a primal level.
I also take inspiration from my favorite films, TV shows, comic books, and anime as well. I enjoy cosplay tremendously, as well as the art of visual storytelling.
How do you deal with criticism online?
I just ignore it. Naysayers, trolls, and bullies don’t contribute to my success and don’t pay my bills, so why should I care what they think? There’s no value to their message, no lesson there for me to learn.
It’s not even like the negative feedback I get is original. Most of the time, it’s the same six insults repeated over and over again by different usernames over the years. Those insults aren’t unique to my career, either. Pretty much every model gets called the same insulting names — it’s laughable.
Constructive criticism is a whole other animal, but I also ignore it most of the time. Every viewer has their own specific opinion of what I should or shouldn’t be shooting, and it’s impossible to cater to all of them. I create the content I want to create in the way I want to create it — end of story.
Why the name Larkin Love? How would you describe Larkin Love? How is she different or similar to you?
When I decided to get into porn, I made a huge list of pseudonyms. Larkin Love made the cut because the “.com” URL was available and I couldn’t find another Larkin in the industry. I wanted to stand out. Plus, the alliteration is totally traditional for porn and sounded right.
Larkin Love isn’t a persona. Larkin Love is the sum total of my erotic art and digital presence. There isn’t a firm division between who I am and who “she” is because I put so much of myself in my work. There isn’t a one-to-one direct similarity between myself and my work either because so much of it is fantasy and acting. Think of us as twins conjoined at the spine: we can’t be separated, yet we are distinct entities that differ in character.
Has your perception of the community changed since you started?
Not really, the stakes have grown progressively higher as I climb the ranks of popularity over the years, but impressions remain the same. Porn is just like any other part of the entertainment business. There is an uneasy fellowship — a sisterhood and brotherhood if you will — between performers.
We do often care about each other, and yet, how much care or assistance is one willing to extend to their direct business and social competition? How far will one go to backstab a fellow performer who obstructs the path to success? The answers to those questions vary from person to person. There are the industry sweethearts. There are the industry vultures. There are the industry angels, predators, false friends, gossipers, and everything else you can think of.
Entertainment attracts big personalities which often go hand in hand with big egos. Interpersonal squabbles can turn into public meltdowns. Alliances form and are broken. Couples meet and split up. In the long term, none of them matter.
The community is so diverse, it can be split into innumerable factions depending on a multitude of factors. Nearly every life stage, political affiliation, income bracket, ethnic background, sexual orientation, and geographic origin can be found in the porn industry. The one thing that unites us is our passion for adult entertainment. Sometimes, that’s enough to bring us together. Sometimes, it isn’t. The porn community is extremely human, both beautiful and fallible, and more so than any other group I’ve been affiliated with.
If you could go back in time to when you started, would you change anything?
I would have skipped mainstream porn altogether and jumped straight into my own content creation. I wasted a lot of time at the beginning trying to get hired for someone else’s erotic production. I can count the number of directors I loved working for on one hand. I had some good times on set, but indie porn is where I’m meant to be. I love having creative control.
What kind of helpful tech advice can you give to new models?
Before you announce your stage name and start shooting, buy the corresponding URL! Buy the “.com,” the “.net,” and any other versions you can think of. Even if you don’t know how to make a website, it doesn’t matter. Control over your name and your image is absolutely critical for long-term success. Snap up the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit profiles too while you’re at it.
How do you use the features on Modelhub and Pornhub to your advantage? How do you decide what to sell and what to post for free?
I use free videos to get people’s attention and paid videos to make my living. Currently, about 17% of my total catalog is available for free viewing on Pornhub. I like to release a good sample of my work that covers most of my main genres. A little cosplay, a little taboo/fauxcest, some femdom, some fetish, some “vanilla” hardcore.
I usually don’t put first-run videos out for free. The way I see it, paid clips are analogous to theater sales of a movie. Free videos are like television syndication of that same film. I make decisions about what media goes where based on sales and market trends, as well as the input of my fans.
What kind of supportive advice would you give to new Models?
Get comfortable with rejection; you’re going to face it a lot. Companies will reject you. Clients will reject you. Strangers will reject you. If you can’t handle daily rejections both big and small, this is not the job for you. If you feel your mental health slipping, take a break, get help, and rest. The industry will be there for you when you feel better.
For the love of all that is holy, learn to manage your finances. Save for retirement; both retirement from the workforce at age 65 and retirement from adult modeling. No matter how strong your career is, you will eventually retire, possibly sooner than you’d like. When that happens, you don’t have to leave the adult industry altogether, but you need to learn marketable skills that go beyond your time in front of the camera and save as much money as you can.
Do not, under any circumstances be catty on social media. Fans do not care about your petty beefs and personal problems. Your Twitter account should be 10% social and 90% media, as in promotional media. Use it as a brand platform, not a place to embarrass yourself.
Do you have any big projects coming up you’d like to share with your fans?
As many of my loyal fans know, my birthday is on Halloween. Every year, I turn October into a month-long party for me and my fans. I call it “Lark-o-ween” because I’m a huge dork like that. I release new cosplay videos, go live for special Halloween-themed cam shows, have incredible birthday specials on everything from clips to premium Snapchat! We end the festivities with a sexy birthday party on live cam. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @larkinlovexxx to hear all about it starting October 1!
Follow Larkin Love on Twitter and Instagram for photos, videos, and updates on her next project.
Twitter @larkinlovexxx
Instagram @larkinloverules
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