Adult entertainment star Gabriel Cross talks his life journey, working in porn and his own mental health.
Gabriel describes how he worked as a child star in London's West End Theatre District, taking to the main stage aged just 7. Describing the industry as 'unhealthy'.
The pay is incredibly bad
Noting the highs from appearing on stage in front of thousands of people, Cross does go further to describe why he believes the work place as a whole to be less than ideal:
"I think it's a very unhealthy industry. There's so much rejection all the time. The audition process contracts are incredibly short. The pay is incredibly bad and you really live hand-to-mouth."
So much rejection... you live hand to mouth
Image from Gabriels social media.
Gabriel discusses with It's Gone Viral how his self confidence issues have been negatively effected, mostly due to his own appearance, especially his height.
While his height doesn't appear in any searches, the beautiful bottom has asked fans how tall they think he is with one Twitter user guessing: '5'4 probably' whilst the actor would only comment 'I'm a shorty' & 'for a guy I'm very short.'
Over muscled physique
The successful porn star describes his 80's upbringing as having a lot of over-muscled guys on show, which manifested in further self confidence issues as to his own body.
If I get rejected for another audition, I am at break down point!
Speaking further in his video interview, the strawberry blond star opens up further about the point he decided to make the switch from traditional theatre background into adult sex work.
"If I go into another single audition and I get turned down again I'm hitting a point where I'm just not going to cope and I feel like I'm at a breakdown point. So, I jumped over into the adult world and immediately saw success. So, it gave me a huge amount of validation."
Serving boyband realness with @EssexSpunk & @jldxxxo
— Gabriel Cross (@GabrielCrossXXX) May 3, 2021
Be posting this one soon 🎞 pic.twitter.com/btsPqg5Xmt
Image above from Gabriel Cross's Twitter account in which he has over 300,000 followers! The picture is SFW, however, Gabe's profile is full of videos and pictures of full on hard core action with him both as a top but mostly a bottom.
You can read the full transcript from Gabriels Interview with It's Gone Viral below. At the bottom of this page you can also watch the video of the super cute Cross.
Gabriel: I was in quite a dark place where I felt very rejected and like I wasn't succeeding.
Hey, I'm Gabriel Cross and I'm here with It's Gone Viral to talk about mental health.
Interviewer: Let's talk about mental health and your journey with mental health. So, tell us a little bit about you and what you do because you've got a really interesting story.
Gabriel: I would classify myself as an adult performer.
Interviewer: If I may I'd like to go back way before the adult performing started. What were you doing previous to that?
Gabriel: So, I trained from a very young age in theatre as a predominantly a professional dancer and kind of worked in theater, I think from the age of seven it was the first time I was on stage in the west end. Nothing compares to being on stage in front of thousands of people and it's an absolutely unbelievable experience. I think it's a very unhealthy industry. There's so much rejection all the time. The audition process contracts are incredibly short. The pay is incredibly bad and you really live hand-to-mouth.
Gabriel: It's very clear when you talk and your energy lifts and the passion that comes across with regards to that high and that addiction of being on stage and everything that goes with that, and then literally in a flip of a coin you explain the lows-
Gabriel: Yeah. Absolutely.
Interviewer: -of rejection. How did that manifest itself in you as a young man?
Gabriel: Self-confidence issues a lot because you're constantly being rejected on an incredibly personal level. A lot of the time it is to do with appearance. For a guy, I'm very short and that definitely significantly impacts on castability. It means you never fit into the chorus. You always have to be going for character roles which there's much fewer of those, and it really began to grate on me and it has had a long-term impact on my self-confidence.
Interviewer: Okay. Specifically, if you're comfortable talking about it your self-confidence with your body image is that is that how it manifested itself?
Gabriel: Yes.
Interviewer: When that was bad what did that look like?
Gabriel: It's still very much there. I think also growing up in the 80s [showing my age here], there was extreme representation of rather over-muscled male physique; it was very apparent. And growing up as a as a gay guy you develop a very strange relationship with it's the body you want to have, as well as the body you want to be with, but it's not necessarily attainable for the majority of people.
Interviewer: Yeah, that's interesting. So, you found yourself in this place where actually you wanted to move on something else.
Gabriel: Yes.
Interviewer: Not really sure what that looked like suffering with confidence issues. From a negative mental health perspective where were you at that point when you went into the sex work?
Gabriel: I was in quite a dark place where I felt very rejected and like I wasn't succeeding. And I'd hit a point where I thought, if I go into another single audition and I get turned down again I'm hitting a point where I'm just not going to cope and I feel like I'm at a breakdown point. So, I jumped over into the adult world and immediately saw success. So, it gave me a huge amount of validation.
Interviewer: And obviously we're talking about mental health awareness.
Gabriel: Yes.
Interviewer: And as we're talking it's very clear that you have an awareness that there is almost a point in the future where there is a potential for your mental health to drop significantly.
Gabriel: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Interviewer: What are you doing to kind of protect yourself from that in the longer term?
Gabriel: I think awareness is very important, but I'm trying to be as sensible and logical almost as possible with the behavior around my mental health and just trying to look at it as much as a job and creating long-term security for myself.
Interviewer: Okay. So, fast forward we've talked a lot about the past.
Gabriel: Yes.
Interviewer: Fast forward to bring us back to the current day and the future and Only Fans. How do you see Only Fans providing you with what you need from both a mental health perspective as well as obviously a financial perspective? The financial thing you've talked about and that's...
Gabriel: Yes. I think it is to use the Only Fans to provide that validation that we spoke about earlier. In a very stark way because of course, you can directly see your figure like your fan count going up and down on a daily basis, and the likes and the level of fan interaction. So, if anything it's probably damaging from a mental health perspective. I find social media a very difficult area because I take things far too personally and people within the only fans. It's normally such a positive interaction that I have with anyone there because they're choosing to pay a subscription to be there. I need to maintain quite a large social media presence from a business perspective. But I wish I didn't because I do think it's very damaging for mental health. The way people interact there is very toxic, I think. It's like you constantly walk a fine line of alienating people or upsetting people. And the way certain people can then react as a result of trolling that then can then kind of snowball from the result of something incredibly minor that may have just been a lack of judgment. At the moment I'm constantly analyzing what I'm posting right and living in constant fear of having hit the wrong nerve, and then that snowballing.
Interviewer: And how does that feel that constant?
Gabriel: Honestly, I would completely withdraw from social media if I could.
Interviewer: Okay.
Gabriel: I have absolutely no interest in being there from a personal perspective. I have no personal social media at all, it's all work. The day I decide to retire and stop the Only Fans, all of my social media will be completely shut down because I have zero interest in it, just from various different personal experiences with it. People definitely will react and put themselves across in a way that they would never act in a normal social setting, if they were there in real life which pushes people to suicide in extreme circumstances. But it's not uncommon. People seem to want to create an enemy rather than enlighten people or try and educate people. It's purely about someone being evil when people are far more complex than that. There are many greys, it's not simply black and white.
Interviewer: Yeah. It sounds very much like as you talk, the vision I'm almost getting is this fine line between judgment and validation.
Gabriel: Yes.
Interviewer: It's almost like a seesaw of your experience. So, you talk there about you know the extreme of mental health issues and suicide. Is that something that you have ever felt like?
Gabriel: Yeah. Actually partially because of social media. I found lockdown very difficult because I'm an incredibly social person, but I have said that I do think I'm in quite a good emotional place right now strangely. I'm hoping now the light is at the end of the tunnel with that side of things. I think everyone has decided that at least here in the UK, really kind of very firmly in that direction. So, I hope that's the end of that. But I've seen how damaging social media can be to friends to myself to various others. People just don't think. I really made a very conscious decision quite some time ago to really only put positive things out that I post. Just having known what a negative impact you can have on someone without even realizing. People just don't seem to think or acknowledge any level of responsibility for their actions.
Interviewer: Is there any advice that you could give to somebody that is in that place right now, has listened to you and gone actually that's he's describing me?
Gabriel: The way I deal more than anything is actually exercise. I know that's silly, but I know it's not uncommon either. I find actually that it's not even the results of the exercise, but that that time I have to myself quietly training really helps my mental stability. You need to learn to lean into your strengths and embrace them; things that make you different and what make you interesting. Once you accept the things that make you different- I mean, people are always threatened by differences, but it's those differences that make you interesting and that can be so much more beautiful than just conforming.
Interviewer: Perfect bit of advice.
Guys, if you've been affected by anything that you've heard in this series, there are people that you can talk to. See below for some relevant organisations that you can reach out to.
The below phone numbers are in the UK if calling from abroad please add +44
MIND: 0300 123 3393
Samaritans: 116 123
Women's Aid: 0808 200 0247
Childline: 0800 11 11
Age UK: 0800 678 1602
CALMzone: 0800 585 858