Octavia Red didn’t go to school from kindergarten through the sixth grade. Instead, she educated herself from home. No teachers, no tutors, no structure.

“I basically taught myself how to read and write,” Red says.

The decision for Red to learn remotely was made by her mother, and according to Red, it had more to do with protecting herself than her child. Red said her mom physically battered her and her older siblings throughout their childhood, and eventually, word of the beatings made its way around the local elementary school when her sisters were students there.

Representatives from Child Protective Services visited the home often and attempted to keep Red’s mother under a watchful eye. Still, the assaults continued, so instead of enrolling Red in the same school as her siblings—where she knew she’d be questioned and examined for bruises—Red’s mother forced her to learn from home.

“She was either in her room or out screaming at us,” Red says. "She wasn’t the best person to ask for help. If I had questions, I’d ask my siblings. I mostly just tried to figure things out on my own.”

The abusive behavior exhibited by Red’s mother contradicted the “super religious” culture she and her husband attempted to engrain into their children. Attending church each Sunday was a must, Red said. She and her siblings were prohibited from watching television and listening to the radio before their teens. Red said she only left the house to go to church or the grocery store.

“They wanted me to be a pretty little princess,” Red says. “They wanted to mold me into the church-going wife who waited at home for her husband each night with dinner. That was never going to be me. I never thought about wedding bells.”

Although she was close with her four siblings who lived in the home, Red didn’t get to spend much time with her father, who owned a construction company and spent a large amount of time at work. And when he was at around, Red says, her mother often attacked him, too.

“They would get into an argument, and he’d leave, and then I wouldn’t see him for a long time,” Red says. “(My mom) wasn’t a heavy drinker, and she didn’t do drugs. I just think she had mental issues, like a lot of people do. She had severe paranoia, and she was very narcissistic.

“What she did is horrible, but she is mentally incapable of being anyone else. Anyone who is normal wouldn’t do what she has done.”

Red began attending in-person school in seventh grade, but things were far from normal. Her family was forced to move multiple times throughout her middle and high school years, resulting in Red attending five different schools in various parts of California before she graduated.

“It made me very socially awkward at first,” Red says. Being an eccentric little oddball, it’s hard for people to find commonality with you, especially when you’re a kid who is still trying to understand herself.

“I was trapped in a world of my own, without any influences.”

Red went through multiple phases as she tried to find her identity. Even though her picturesque breasts had almost fully developed, she hid them with oversized shirts. She spent her free time reading fantasy and adventure novels on her front porch and became an accomplished pianist.

Red also routinely dyed her hair black, among other colors, and sported a faux hawk. She wore a septum piercing in her nose and gauges and industrial piercings in her ears.

“I was a punk goth girl in an Abercrombie and Fitch family,” Red says. “I had no interest in nail polish or makeup. I was very much a tomboy, very insecure.”

But she was also very determined.

Red graduated from high school and quickly established herself as a hard worker. From age 18 to 22, she lived in Bend, Oregon, where she operated a Starbucks kiosk in a grocery store from 5:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day. After an hour’s break, she logged six hours as a shift supervisor at a dispensary.

Red eventually moved back to California, just outside of Sacramento, and was again grinding away at two jobs—the cannabis farm during the day, the casino at night—before COVID struck in March of 2020, forcing the casino to close temporarily.

Low on money and searching for ideas, Red remembered the old western shows she used to watch during her lonely teenage years. She was always fascinated by the actresses who wore burlesque. The recollection sparked an idea Red wishes she’d pursued much earlier: lingerie and boudoir modeling.

Like so many other out-of-work females in 2020, Red launched an OnlyFans account.

Four days later, a message showed up in Red’s Twitter DMs.

A message that changed her life.

*****

The career of one of adult’s fastest-rising stars almost ended after three scenes.

It was the spring of 2020, and the DM that Red received had come from an agent who was smitten by her risqué photos on OnlyFans. He told her she’d be a natural for porn.

Following several months of discussions, Red accepted an offer to shoot a trio of scenes for Net Video Girls. For Red, the experience was exhilarating: the cameras, the pampering, the attention, the seeexxx. It was beyond anything she could’ve imagined.

The adult industry, Red thought, might just be her calling.

But then?

“I got cold feet,” Red says. “With my family being super Christian, I started to worry about what they would think about me, about how my siblings would view me. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing. It was enough to make me back away.”

Red continued to work at the cannabis farm and also returned to her job as a beverage server at the casino once it reopened. Each night, Red says, patrons would pepper her with catcalls and propositions for shenanigans in their hotel rooms.

“Eventually, I thought, ‘This is fucking stupid,’” Red tells PornCrush. “I was barely making any money and I was getting sexually harassed. I figured I might as well do what makes me happy.”

Almost one year after those initial three shoots, Red returned to the adult industry in the fall of 2021 and her career has been on a steady uptick ever since. The Internet Adult Film Database (IAFD) lists a combined 150 credits for Red in 2022 and 2023, and the number is likely much larger than that, as some of her work has yet to be released.

Evil Angel, Jules Jordan, Vixen, Adult Time, Kink, Naughty America, Team Skeet … Red has shot for almost every A-list studio over the past two years, and her agent says the best is yet to come.

“I get calls about Octavia daily,” says Foxxx Modeling owner Chris Cane, who represents Red. “Her momentum has been rising for two years, but right now, it’s as strong as it’s ever been.”

Red’s success has hardly come as a surprise to veteran performer Lexi Luna. The two met on set early in Red’s career, and a friendship quickly blossomed. Luna became a mentor to Red as she navigated through the early portion of her career.

“She’s like the younger sibling I always wanted,” Luna says. “She’s surrounded herself with people who can help her, and she’s not afraid to ask for advice.

"I’m really impressed with the way Octavia stays true to herself. She follows her own style and doesn’t do what everyone else is doing. Not everyone has the freedom or perseverance to say, ‘Fuck it, this is who I am.’”

It’s certainly working, as directors and adult film critics continue to marvel at Red’s performances—mainly because they don’t feel like performances at all. From the moment she entered the industry, Red operated like a seasoned talent, which is a bit of a surprise considering she had just 10 sexual partners before starting porn.

Still, Red had long been fascinated by sex and erotica. She says her pleasing nature was molded by the affinity she had for watching gay porn in her early 20s.

“I really do appreciate the male body,” Red says. “There’s something that masculinity that I find to be very beautiful. It comes from growing up around very soft and genuine men. I’ve seen men be abused a lot. So I have a soft heart for those kind of men.”

Some of Red’d best work in recent months can be viewed in “Double Edged Sword,” the highly-ranked Vixen scene with Vince Karter. During the blowjob portion of the shoot, Red dangled a thick, long string of her saliva above Karter’s dick before twirling it around the head and drizzling it onto the shaft. She then took a few seconds to admire her masterpiece before engulfing it with her mouth. Vixen used the segment as part of the scene’s trailer.

“Even though I know it’s just work, we’re still exchanging parts of ourselves,” Red says. “We’re still being vulnerable with ourselves. You’re still giving me your body, and I’m giving you mine.

“I mean, yeah, we’re not going to get married afterward. We may not ever see each other again, and that’s cool, too. But in that moment, I want to appreciate who I’m with. I want to make them feel as good as possible.”

Donnie Rock can certainly vouch for Red’s ability to spoil her partner, having worked with her multiple times as both a talent and a director. Rock has three more shoots booked with Red this month and envisions many more in the future.

“She’s so seductive and intense—she’ll stare holes through you,” Rock says. “She wants to be inside of your body. She wants to be a part of you for 30 minutes. That definitely comes across on camera.

“Plus, her body is a perfect 10. She probably has the best boobs in the business, along with Blake Blossom. And she’s so pleasant to be around. She’s a total pro. There’s nothing not to like.”

Nubiles director Nick Stecki agrees.

Along with being “visually perfect,” Stecki says Red is one of the top dirty talkers in porn. Sometimes, she speaks softly while staring into the eyes of her scene partner, which plays especially well during oral encounters. Other times, she’ll whisper into his ear.

“She gets them to the point where they want to beg for more,” Stecki says. “But they can’t speak, because they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is happening?’ She gets this wicked smile when she says those things. She wants to please them and make them happy. She’s great at being the aggressor in that way, while also being submissive.

“I can’t tell another actress, ‘Hey, do this like Octavia Red,’ because they’d get pissed at me. You can’t be Octavia Red unless you are Octavia Red.”

Still, the reasons Red has become one of Stecki’s favorite models extend beyond her elite-level performances. After all, he says, the industry is filled with attractive women who know how to excel when the cameras are rolling. The ones who get rebooked time and time again are those who do other things to create a lasting impression.

“They way she constantly responds to someone with a smile is the most genuine thing you’ll ever see,” Stecki says.  It’ll cut straight to your heart. It’s piercing. It’s hard to even think after she does it. You get used to the world being a certain level of brightness, but when she’s there, it’s almost overwhelmingly bright. And then she leaves and things go back to normal.”

Red said her compassion and attentiveness to others stems from her childhood, when she often felt insignificant and ignored. Painful as it was to endure, Red said the experience shaped her into who she is today.

"I want people to feel listened to and heard and seen,” she says. “It’s what we all crave. I craved that for so long in my life, being so isolated. I don’t want anyone else to feel misunderstood or alone or like no one cares. Even if we're talking about about some short little song you wrote yesterday or some tiny little poem … those things mean something.”

As she continues to thrive, Red still harbors the wounds she absorbed as a youth. She doesn’t watch her scenes because she’s “too embarrassed,” and her spirit gets shaken when she isn’t nominated for certain awards. Deep down, Red knows that confidence issues and self-doubt are the results of growing up under an abusive mother.

“It’s impossible to go through something like that and come out unscathed,” she says. “My mom had kids when she was very young. As an adult, I can say, ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have been the best mother under that circumstance, either.’ I’ve tried to forgive her and move on from it. I don’t want to hold onto the bitterness the way my siblings do.”

Red also experienced another series of family-related setbacks that began in 2021, when her father—with whom she’d eventually grown close—died of heart-related issues. She also lost two of her sisters to cancer and another to liver disease.

Red, though, continues to surge forward. One of her favorite coping mechanisms is to lie on her back and stare at the clouds. Not always the real ones in the sky, but the fake ones she’s affixed to the blue-painted ceiling of her Los Angeles-area condo. The setup is quite elaborate.

“Cotton and tiny Chinese lanterns and LED lights and hot glue,” Red says of the components that comprise the makeshift clouds, which actually illuminate.

Staring up at them reminds her of all those afternoons and evenings during grade school when she’d flee the turmoil of her home and escape to a porch or open field. Sprawled out on her back—often after eating shrooms—Red would gaze toward the sky, stare into the clouds, and let her mind wander.  She used the time not to dwell on where she had been.

But to dream about where she could go.

“Lots of people face adversity,” Red says, “but it’s all about how you respond to it. It’s about having a steel rod as a backbone and saying, “Fuck it. I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep going.’”