Julia Fox says working as a dominatrix empowered her and taught her how to act
The artist, actor and fashion icon joins Q’s Tom Power to discuss her new memoir, Down the Drain
Julia Fox shot to fame after starring alongside Adam Sandler in the 2019 crime thriller Uncut Gems. Now, with the release of her hotly anticipated memoir, Down the Drain, the 33-year-old artist, actor and fashion designer has added writer to the list as well.
More simply, however, you could say Fox is a pop culture icon for being herself — even if she's often misunderstood.
"It's so funny because I always hear so many things about myself and it's either that I'm like this, you know, mastermind manipulative marketing genius, or I'm like this vapid dumb ass," Fox tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "So this is a way I can kind of, like, rewrite my own narrative or set the record straight, I guess, because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions.
"They maybe see the makeup, they see the clothes and they just don't get it. And so this is a way to just kind of maybe humanize me and show that there's much more than meets the eye, and hopefully people will be able to empathize a little bit more and not project their weird whatever it is onto me.… Celebrities really are just people — and I hate that term, celebrity. It feels so icky when people refer to me as a celebrity. I'm like, 'Eww, stop. Like, gross.'"
While Fox's debut performance in Uncut Gems was her breakthrough role, she truly got her big break when she was just 18. She was scanning New York City Craigslist ads when she came across a job posting that said "Dominatrix dungeon hiring *NO SEX* *no nudity* *no experience necessary." She applied and got the job.
"It felt kind of like the beginning of the rest of my life," she says. "It just felt like a no-brainer because prior to that I worked in ice cream shops, shoe stores, pastry shops, I babysat, and it was minimum wage, $7 an hour. It was not sustainable at all….
"When I saw the ad, I just jumped…. Like it really felt like I was on the helm of something really major that was going to change my life forever. And I can say that I wouldn't be here today if I didn't go down that road."
Beyond providing her with greater financial security, Fox says one of the positive things that came from working as a dominatrix was that it taught her how to play a character.
"You have five clients come in and, you know, one wants the mean popular girl at school to tease him and call him a loser. Then one wants a nun — I don't know why. One wants, like, a mean older sister, one wants a neglectful mommy, you know what I mean? … So I'd have to be like 10 people every day with a couple minutes notice. And it's all just improv.
"I remember the first time just being like, 'Oh my God, what do I do? This is so weird.' And then eventually, with practice, it just becomes second nature…. It's kind of like an art form, really. But it was a great exercise, just like a mental exercise. And I feel like it's probably why I'm so comfortable with improv today — I'm actually way more comfortable with improv than I am with trying to memorize a bunch of lines and rehearse them."
Fox had an unstable childhood growing up in a neglectful, emotionally distant household with "a lot of men around." She says coming from a "very masculine cold environment to this very warm, feminine environment" in the dominatrix dungeon helped fortify her self-esteem.
"It taught me how to act, but it also taught me my worth in a way. And it taught me how to have self-esteem, you know, because to be a dominatrix, you have to be empowered. I didn't want to be faking it, I really wanted to be that….
It was a very empowering time, and not at all what some might expect from working in the sex industry.- Julia Fox
"Maybe coming from such a misogynistic environment into the polar opposite, which is the dungeon, where women rule and men are trash, you know, maybe that's what every girl should do. Because out in the real world, it's the opposite of that. In movies and in media and everywhere, it's like the woman kind of being submissive to the man. It was very eye-opening, and I chose then and there that that was how I wanted to live. I didn't want to be submissive to a man."
Seeing the negative ideas she had about herself disproven in the dungeon was healing for Fox. "It was a very empowering time, and not at all what some might expect from working in the sex industry," she tells Power.
"The money and the privileges I was able to earn working at the dungeon is kind of what was able to secure that future in art and in fashion, and really doing the things I always wanted to do, but that just never seemed like they were in the cards for me. So I slowly was like, 'OK, I'm going to embrace this identity that I'd been suppressing for a long time."
WATCH | Julia Fox's interview with Tom Power:
The full interview with Julia Fox is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. She also talks about her tumultuous upbringing, Uncut Gems and feeling "born ready" for fame. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Julia Fox produced by Vanessa Nigro.
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