Once a Crystal Palace talent on his way to the Premier League, Damian Oliver decided to pursue a career in porn. But on the way there, the former footballer had to go through a stroke of fate and numerous life crises.
Giving up the Premier League dream to become a porn actor? This is the career decision Damian Oliver made. The Englishman was once considered a talent in Crystal Palace youth who could one day make it to the top flight.
But several strokes of fate ensured that Oliver does not earn his money with football today. In the podcast “Anything Goes With James English” he talked about his life as a porn actor – and how it came about.
“It’s not as good as people think,” says Oliver, who now also regrets his decision for financial reasons: “My first shoot was scary. The director was a tall, bald Irishman, he was scary. I had to face him pull my penis out and f*****.” He was paid £150 for his performance.
He was sweating so much that the people around him were constantly cleaning the floor. Friends around him told him he had to be good at it because Oliver was known to have slept with a lot of women – only now he would get paid for it.
It just took a while for him to find the confidence to actually do it and until then the job was unpaid. “I could have earned a lot more as a footballer,” Oliver said of his time at Crystal Palace: “I fought too, maybe that would have gone somewhere.”
Damian Oliver: “I didn’t have a real childhood”
But it didn’t. In the podcast, the former academy player also spoke about his difficult past. “I didn’t really have a childhood,” Oliver said. His mother and father separated, which meant that he spent and had to spend a lot of time with his grandparents.
However, his grandmother died of breast cancer when he was 14 years old. From then on he took care of his grandfather, whom he described as very lonely. Oliver himself fell. He tried drugs, had sex with many girls and broke the law several times. The former footballer was even part of gangs. Within a very short time he “did all kinds of shit” and ended up in prison at the age of 17.
He had to serve two out of four months there, but the punishment was “not tough enough”. After that, he just kept going. Drugs and violence shaped his life. In his first long-term relationship, he also became a father. At the same time, however, he was again convicted of kidnapping.
The court initially wanted to sentence him to twelve years in prison, but in a subsequent hearing he got four. He had to serve two of them before he was released. “During my sentence, I learned for the first time in my life who I really am,” he explained. “It really changed me.”
Today, Oliver is dating Sophie Anderson, whom he describes as “one of the greatest porn actresses in the country”. She is his “soul mate” and he has never met anyone with whom he has felt so connected on so many levels.
Oliver no longer has a future in the football business. But he is confident about the future: “We have to do what we believe in and keep pushing it. Life will always appreciate that, but you can’t just give up.”
