August Ames Porn Star Bio & FAQ

• August Ames Personal Information
• Life Before Porn
• Porn Career
• August Ames Suicide
• What happened after August Ames' death?
• Where to Watch August Ames

August Ames Personal Information

Life Before Porn

August Ames was of polish ancestry and was one-quarter African-American. She was born in Canada in 1994 and had a difficult childhood. August claimed her paternal grandfather sexually molested her, but her father didn't believe her, and her mother suffered from bipolar disorder. At the age of 12, August was sent to live in a group home. Her parents were both in the forces, so she spent her early life living on or near military bases, including the Canadian forces base Petawawa.

Despite the nomadic life and family issues, she graduated from Oromocto High School, and afterwards, found work as a nanny and as a horse-riding instructor.

Porn Career

August's career in porn began in 2013 when she was 19, and once started in the business, she made over 270 movies for companies such as Brazzers and Elegant Angel. During her career, she received four AVN nominations, three of which were for Female Performer of the Year. She has worked with Evil Angel, Jules Jordan, Girlfriends Films, Sweetheart Video and New Sensations among many others, which is quite something when you think she was only working in porn for four years. That's a testament to her popularity among the industry's directors and producers, not to mention stars and fans.

August also appeared in a non-porn film, “Model for Murder: The Centerfold Killer.” Released in 2016, this mainstream movie starred Jon Flemming and Erika Jordan, among others, and concerned a group of supermodels competing to get the centerfold spread in a magazine, and being murdered one by one. The movie has a three out of five-star rating on Amazon.

During all of this, August Ames found time to marry Evil Angel director, Kevin Moore, but tragically, her life was soon to be cut short.

August Ames Suicide

August Ames died in December 2017, and the events surrounding her death are controversial. According to sources, she was slated to make a scene with Jaxton Wheeler, a pansexual porn performer who'd also made gay porn. August pulled out of the shoot and tweeted a message that basically warned whoever was to replace her would be working with a guy who had shot gay porn. (A model who does both gay and straight porn is called a 'crossover' performer.) She criticised the agents saying 'Do agents really not care about who they are representing?' and Jaxton Wheeler took offence to the remark. He demanded Ames apologise for the slight or take a cyanide pill (a bad taste remark which he later regretted), but Ames defended her right to exercise her sexual autonomy.

Two days later, on December 5th, she was found dead in a park in Camarilo, California, apparently having hanged herself from a tree. An investigation took place, and the autopsy revealed traces of recreational drugs and antidepressant medication. Her friends, however, claimed that cyberbullying led to her suicide.

What happened after August Ames' death?

The audible series, the Last Days of August, by Jon Ronson, investigated the days leading up to her death, and encouraged by her husband, Kevin Moore, the programme looked into the claims of cyberbullying. It also looked closely at Moore's relationship with August and other women, and her history of mental illness. The programme concluded that a number of factors and people contributed to August's poor state of mind leading up to her death.

Following her suicide, and in the wake of several other deaths of porn stars that year, various initiatives were put forward within the adult industry. The August Project was one of them. Adult industry performers Shyla Stylez, Olivia Nova, Yurizan Beltran, and Olivia Lua, all died within the three months leading up to the 35th annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Video News Awards, and something had to be done. Moore worked to set up the August Project, a suicide prevention hotline staffed by people who understood the unique emotional pressures created by working in the adult business, and said about his project: “We're either a real business that takes care of our [performers], or we are the very thing the outside world thinks we are.” [Rolling Stone magazine, March 2018]

The issues raised by August's suicide continue to run in the adult world. Her objection to working with a crossover performer could have been a concern about HIV, for example. Although every model working in porn should have a PASS test, there are still concerns about the health of models. PASS stands for Performer Availability Scheduling Services and is a standardised STI testing system to show the models they are safe. The issues of cyberbullying, testing, the right of models not to work with other models and many more discussions are still taking place in porn today, and probably always will.

So, it seems, from the tragedy of August Ames' death has come a rethinking in porn. It led, directly or indirectly, to an examination of aspects of the porn world which may have been previously overlooked. So, although porn lost a popular and talented performer, the industry has learnt from and won't forget August Ames.

Where to Watch August Ames

I found a list of 50 titles starring August Ames, and below are a few suggestions for just some of her movies and the sites where you can find them. (August was also known as Hailey Edwards at Girls Gone Wild.) She did, of course, make many more scenes than this, but these will get you started.