Nikita Bellucci vs. Online Harassment: The French Star Who Took Her Abusers to Court

Key facts

Who: Nikita Bellucci, French actress and director, born November 6, 1989, in Pau (Wikipedia FR)
Career: Debuted 2011; worked in France and the US; retired August 2016; returned as an independent producer in late 2019 (Wikipedia FR)
Awards: AVN Award 2017; XBIZ Foreign Female Performer of the Year 2017 and 2018; XBIZ Europa Best Actress 2024 (Wikipedia FR)
Fight: Spoke publicly about cyber-harassment in 2018, filed complaints; one harasser was sentenced (Wikipedia FR)
Courts: A company’s €700,000 claim against her and her husband was thrown out in 2024 (Wikipedia FR)

Everybody thinks the hardest moment in a porn career is the first scene. It isn’t. For many women in this business, the hardest moment comes after — when they stop, try to build a normal life, and discover that the world won’t let them.

I’ve been in this industry for 14 years. I’m one of the most-searched male performers in the world. And I’ll be honest: as a man, I get a much easier ride. The insults I receive are nothing compared to what my female colleagues get, every single day, in their inboxes, in the comments, sometimes on the street.

Nikita Bellucci is one of the women who decided not to accept it. She went public, she went to the police, she went to court — and she won. Her story is French, but it belongs to everyone in this business.

From Pau to the Paris suburbs

Nikita Bellucci was born on November 6, 1989, in Pau, in southwest France. Her mother was a baker. She spent the first ten years of her life in Mourenx, then, after her parents divorced, moved to the Paris suburbs and later to Paris itself. She studied for a vocational certificate in catering and worked as a waitress in Dreux (Wikipedia FR).

Her stage name tells you a little about her: “Bellucci” for her mother’s Italian family, “Nikita” for the heroine of the film Nikita (Wikipedia FR). A tough woman’s name. It fits.

How she started

She has said openly that she was a regular porn viewer and had a crush on a performer, Ian Scott. She contacted him on Facebook. At that time, she says, she had no plan to become an actress herself. Through him she met performer Phil Hollyday, who sent her to John B. Root, one of the most awarded directors in French adult film. Root gave her her first scene for his company, Explicite-Art, and she started in 2011 (Wikipedia FR).

I like that she tells this story without shame. A lot of performers feel they have to invent a dramatic reason for starting. She just says: I was curious, I met people, I tried it.

Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the big leagues

The French magazine and studio Hot Vidéo took her to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas in January 2013. She wasn’t supposed to stay and shoot — but it happened on the spot. She walked the red carpet at the 30th AVN Awards and then went to Los Angeles (Wikipedia FR).

She spent three months in the US, worked with the well-known agent Mark Spiegler, shot for Kink, and worked with performers including James Deen, Manuel Ferrara, Skin Diamond, Asa Akira, Bonnie Rotten and Riley Reid (Wikipedia FR). Back in France, she signed an exclusive contract with Hot Vidéo and appeared on several of its covers between 2013 and 2016 (Wikipedia FR).

Then came the awards. AVN nominations in 2014 and 2016. In 2017, an AVN Award for best sex scene in a foreign production, with Misha Cross, in a John Stagliano film. The same year, XBIZ Foreign Female Performer of the Year — and again in 2018 (Wikipedia FR).

By any standard, she had made it at the international level. A French girl from a baker’s family, recognised by the two biggest award shows in the American industry.

Retirement, and a door slammed shut

In August 2016, after about six years, she announced she was ending her acting career. In interviews at the time she talked about how hard it is to be respected as a human being when a woman independently chooses a life that isn’t “normal” (Wikipedia FR).

She tried to retrain. She has said she started a course in the medical-social field. According to her account on the French TV programme Le Journal du hard, the school found out about her past and expelled her. She brought in lawyers, the press and STRASS, the French sex workers’ union, to fight it. By her account, she won, continued her training and got her diploma (Wikipedia FR).

Think about what that means. She did what society says it wants former performers to do: leave, study, get a “respectable” job. And the institution tried to throw her out for it.

Earlier, in October 2015, she had already called out the airline Transavia on Twitter after a joke at her expense about her career, saying the stigma meant people acted like she had no right to an opinion or to cultivate her mind (Wikipedia FR).

2018: going public about harassment

In January 2018, starting with an interview with the French media outlet Konbini, she alerted the press to the flood of sexual messages she was receiving on social media — including from minors, some as young as twelve. She pointed to a “total lack of prevention and education” for young teenagers about access to porn. She also described the harassment former actresses face, online and in the street, and said she had given up on wanting a child because of the hatred directed at her (Wikipedia FR).

On February 28, 2018, she spoke about it on the TV show Touche pas à mon poste ! On March 31, she filed a complaint for harassment over insults and threats posted on the “Blabla 18-25” forum of the gaming site Jeuxvideo.com. In May, she filed another complaint over death threats on social networks. That same year, one of her harassers was sentenced to eighteen months in prison, three of them to be served (Wikipedia FR).

I want to stop here, because this is the heart of the story.

A conviction. Real prison time. For online abuse of a former porn actress.

Most people in my industry have been told, one way or another, that harassment is “part of the job.” That if you put yourself out there, you have to accept whatever comes back. Nikita Bellucci refused that idea in public, in front of a national TV audience, and then proved in court that the law applies to us too.

Coming back — on her own terms

After three years away, at the end of 2019, she returned to adult film — this time producing only her own content, choosing her own casting and her own locations. She describes it as “ethical porn,” focused on consent, the wellbeing of performers and fair pay (Wikipedia FR).

On Le Journal du hard she explained that leaving had left her with “a taste of unfinished business.” She came back together with her husband, a camera operator (Wikipedia FR). In December 2019, she ranked second in a Pornhub list of most-viewed adult actresses, ahead of French star Clara Morgane (Wikipedia FR).

In 2021 the couple bought the RDV Club, a historic couples-only club in Rouen, which reopened in February 2022 after renovation (Wikipedia FR). She has also directed films, including Never Without You, shown in Dorcel’s “Porn Is Also Made By Women” festival (Wikipedia FR).

Turning her own story into a film

On September 5, 2024, she won Best Actress at the XBIZ Europa Awards for Hors Cadre. The film, produced by her own studio and directed by her husband Ludovic Dekan, is inspired by her real life: the difficulty of starting over after her first retirement, the cyber-harassment and the prejudice she faced (Wikipedia FR).

That is the most “Nikita Bellucci” thing possible. The industry hurt her, society hurt her, and she took the experience and made it into her best-rewarded work.

Standing up — and winning in court again

In June 2022 she publicly sided with the alleged victims in a French investigation into a well-known porn website’s owner, describing what she called a “logic of predators.” The company that runs that brand then sued her and her husband in the Paris commercial court, asking for €700,000 in damages, claiming her statements were disparaging (Wikipedia FR).

On January 30, 2024, the court declared itself not competent and ordered the company to pay her €10,000 in costs. The company appealed. On December 18, 2024, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the decision, rejected all the company’s claims and ordered it to pay €6,000 more (Wikipedia FR).

I’m not going to comment on the investigation itself — that is for the courts. What I’ll say is this: a performer spoke up for other women, a company tried to make her pay €700,000 for it, and she won twice.

What I learn from Nikita Bellucci

Harassment is not “part of the job.” It’s a crime, and courts can punish it.
Speak publicly. She used Konbini, TV and Twitter to make her problem everyone’s problem.
Use institutions. Lawyers, the union, the police, the courts.
Come back only on your terms. Her own production, her own casting, her own rules.
Turn pain into work. Hors Cadre won her the biggest European award of her career.

My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)

People love to say porn performers “chose this life” — as if that means they chose the abuse that comes with it. Nikita Bellucci’s story destroys that argument. She chose a career. She didn’t choose death threats, a school trying to expel her, or a company trying to bankrupt her for speaking up. And when those things came, she fought every one of them, legally and in public.

As a man in this industry, I think I have a responsibility to say it clearly: what happens to women like her online is not normal and not acceptable. Respect the work or don’t watch it, but leave the people alone.

She’s one of the bravest performers in Europe. And she proved that being in this industry doesn’t take away your rights.

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FAQ

Who is Nikita Bellucci?

A French adult actress and director, born November 6, 1989, in Pau, active from 2011, retired in 2016 and back as an independent producer since 2019 (Wikipedia FR).

Did Nikita Bellucci win against her harassers?

She filed complaints in 2018; one harasser was sentenced to 18 months in prison, three of them to be served (Wikipedia FR).

What awards has Nikita Bellucci won?

An AVN Award in 2017, XBIZ Foreign Female Performer of the Year in 2017 and 2018, and XBIZ Europa Best Actress in 2024 for Hors Cadre (Wikipedia FR).

How we fact-checked this

Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below (translated from French by us). Quotes appear as the sources reported them; anything we could not confirm was left out. Some events are her own account and are labeled that way. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.