JUSTIN LILES, BENEATH THE SKIN
ADULT FILM STAR ON HIS MAINSTREAM FILM, RETURN TO PORN JAMES GRADY | @jamesallengrady
Around Nashville, adult film star Hunter Page is known as Justin Liles. He’s a guy you probably met, or saw, working at Tribe or Play, or perhaps you grabbed a photo with him in his toga when he was out supporting the TEP at Olympus. Liles, who just turned twenty-one this year, has already done his share of living, and it looks like things are still heating up for him. Liles broke into the gay porn industry as Hunter Page when he was just eighteen with a solo for CollegeDudes, and has since developed a large following, with over 50,000 followers on Twitter (@HunterPageXXX). In 2014, he received five Grabby (think gay porn Oscars) nominations, including Best Newcomer, Best Actor, Best Group, and Best Duo (twice), and he won Best Duo for a scene with Shawn Wolfe at NakedSword. But at the height of his rise in the adult industry, Liles/Page suddenly stopped shooting new porn scenes for about a year. In an industry where scenes sometimes don’t get released for weeks or months and the internet keeps old scenes circulating, you might not have really noticed the break unless you are a die-hard fan wondering why you aren’t getting nearly weekly new releases like you once were. When we spoke in late March, though, Liles revealed that he was ready to start shooting again. “I’m leaving for Vegas in a few days, and that’ll be the first time I’ve shot since February of 2014.” Liles is jumping back into the industry with both feet—as he does with most things he’s decided to do. “In the next couple of months, I know I’m going to six major cities a month [mostly for work] until July or August,” he said. He’ll be visiting and shooting in Las Vegas, Orlando, New York, D.C., San Francisco, L.A., and Toronto, to name a few. During his break from the industry, though, Liles announced to friends on Facebook that he was embarking on an exciting new adventure! Last year, Liles was cast as the lead in a mainstream, independent LGBT themed film, Beneath the Skin. It’s not something Liles anticipated or sought: Liles said he never wanted to be an actor. “I still to this day don’t want to be,” he said. There are parts of it he did enjoy. “I like learning
28
the lines and proving to myself that I can do it, but I hate actually being around other people on a set because most of the people there have been wanting this and have a passion for it. Then there’s me just coming in, and the only acting I did was in the third grade!” This, of course, raises the real question of how and why Liles ended up as the lead in a film! According to Liles, Aaron Ellis, the film’s author and director, “had found me through my work in the adult industry, and he looked at that as a good way of marketing the film.” Liles’ significant social media following and connections would be a boon for an
OUTANDABOUTNASHVILLE.COM
MAY 2015
independent, young, British filmmaker trying to get his movie in front of the market. “I think Aaron chose me specifically because he thought I could reach out to a lot more people and not just be on a sexual basis, though he did throw enough of my @$$ out in that movie!” Liles said. And he still gives Ellis a hard time about his casting methods. “I give him hell to this day about that! I mean how he found me…. I’m like, ‘I know what you were really doing when you found me’,” Liles said, laughing. Beneath the Skin is a drama centered on a British student, Joshua (played by
Ellis), who is sent to Canada after the death of his mother. In Canada, he meets Jay (Liles), an aspiring American artist, who had come to Canada to escape familial violence in native Alabama. The two castaways are drawn to one another, despite interference from bullies, as the story unfolds. Initially, Liles expressed concerns about the script, which he addressed with the creative team to his satisfaction. As an additional inducement to join the cast, however, Liles was named executive producer. “Naming me an executive producer on the movie got me interested because I do like the business aspects of the industry, just not the acting!” Finally, in June, Liles left Nashville to begin six weeks of shooting, first in Canada, then in England. Shooting for Beneath the Skin was a unique experience, because the cast and crew were, for the most part, as young as Liles. “Aaron’s a year younger than me, he just turned twenty-one a week ago,” Liles reported. “Almost everyone who worked on this film is under twenty-five, no one’s been doing this for a long time. Aaron wrote the script and got investors involved, so this is something some kid aspired to do: he wrote a script and made it happen…. It’s not just money for him, this is his baby, everything he’s wanted for the last 4-5 years, so I respect him for that.” The trip was Liles’ first experience abroad. “I figured London would be harder to get used to but I think Canada— Halifax specifically—almost killed me,” he said, laughing. Specifically, he was unprepared for the bitter cold of Halifax in June. “The very first night filming,” Liles said, “it was about midnight, we were sitting looking out over the water— and this is funny because this was my least favorite scene to shoot and it also got cut—but … it was like 15 or 20 degrees outside. I’m sitting there in this big jacket, hoodie, undershirt, pants trying not to sound like I’m shivering… Every part of my body was shaking, the camera couldn’t even keep up with me, and I’m like, ‘I can’t stay out here!’ So it took us about four-and-a-half hours to shoot.” It’s ironic that Liles says Halifax almost killed him, since, later, while shooting in London, he was mugged coming out of a tattoo parlor! “I walk out and turn the corner,” Liles recalled, “and I didn’t even get three steps, and this guy, he has a knife, says ‘Give me your money!’ I almost laughed for a second because I remembered, ‘Oh yeah, everybody doesn’t just have guns in this country.’ I was like. ‘Okay, here
