A Californian porn star has quit her successful career and has started a new life as a pastor. Brittni De La Mora and her husband, both 31, preach the gospel at Cornerstone Church in San Diego. Under her stage name, Jenna Presley, Brittni was ranked one of the world’s hottest female adult performers, starred in over 300 films and earned around 30,000 dollars a month before leaving the industry. Now she’s making money as a real estate agent and using her voice at the local church to help reduce the stigma adult film actors have among religious people.

She told New York Post, “I used to be named one of the world’s hottest porn stars. I had a brand-new Mercedes and every new Louis Vuitton purse, Christian Louboutin heels…I really played the part.” But at the same time, she was battling drug addiction and suicidal thoughts and often struggled to pay her rent. She added, “I would spend thousands and thousands of dollars on drugs a week. I started off with cocaine but then eventually I was battling a heroin addiction” Brittni was first introduced with the sex industry when she was 16 on a trip to Mexico with her friends. She got drunk at a club there and was put on the stage to strip.

Brittni started stripping to pay for college but was quickly recruited by a pair of adult entertainment producers. She admitted, “I was naïve, but I wasn’t that naïve. I knew they were talking about porn films. I got accepted to be represented by a premier agency and I made the move to become a full-time porn star and dropped out of college.” Just after two months, she caught gonorrhoea and developed addiction to heroin. She also became anorexic and was admitted to the hospital.

A year later when she was released from the hospital, she was told by a director that she needed to lose weight, though she was just 105 pounds. She asked a model what she did to maintain her thin figure and she suggested cocaine and crystal meth, as reported in Daily Mail. “I had more energy and I could perform scenes and not even think about the repercussions anymore. It was giving me false sense of happiness,” De La Mora said. Her calling to the church came when one day she called her grandmother for help, who picked her up and drove her from LA to San Diego. In 2012, she quit her career as a porn star for good and began attending local church.

Brittni met her husband, pastor Richard De La Mora at Cornerstone. The pair married in 2016 and together they now lead the young adult ministry at their church. The couple have written two relationship books together, set to be released later this year. Brittni also attends porn conventions to speak with performers about the Bible’s teachings. She said, “I say that I live life with no regrets. If I had never gotten into the porn industry, I wouldn’t have got to do all the incredible things I’m doing now.”

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 31, 2018 08:37 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).