Adult Film Actor Leaves Industry to Find Fulfillment

“He speaks to every insecurity I had,” says Joshua. “He was like, ‘man you could just be as famous as you want.’”

Joshua Broome was one of the most popular porn actors in the world…and his choices led him to the brink of suicide.

Joshua says, “I wanted to die. And I felt like I had dug myself such a gigantic hole that I could never get out.”

Joshua was raised in a loving home without the presence of his father.

“That caused me to feel like I needed to prove myself because I was struggling with this insecurity and self-worth and identity,” says Joshua.

As a teenager he sought approval and an identity in modeling.

“This is something that I’m good at, least I can find, you know, purpose in,” Joshua says. “This is something I can find, like I can identify with.”

Joshua felt like he was on an emotional roller coaster between acceptance rejection.

“I felt a lot of affirmation, but it didn't last,” he says. “If I wasn't working on something or someone got a job that I, you know, I wanted, again, I fell back into you know, ‘Woe is me. What's wrong with me?’"

In his early twenties, he moved to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming an actor.  While working at a bar for extra income, Joshua was approached by some young women.

“They were like ‘Hey, have you ever, you know, thought about acting?’ And I was like "Well, I'm an actor actually. And they were like ‘We're talking about porn,’" Joshua says.

The women introduced Joshua to an agent in the porn industry.

Joshua recalls, “I open a door and on the other side of that door is this massive desk with this guy with a 3-piece suit on and a double Windsor tie and he sits there and he speaks to every insecurity I had. He was like, ‘Man you could just be as famous as you want.’ I knew in my gut that my mom did not raise me to do this. But I made that decision to say ‘yes’ and I went to that studio, and to be honest the next thing I knew I was on my way home with a check in my hand.”

He soon starred in several more adult films.

“That was a very long process of me justifying one thing and then doing another, and then all of a sudden I stopped justifying it and I just saw myself as this product,” says Joshua.

Before long, Joshua was winning adult film awards and becoming famous. Still, he was plagued by a guilty conscience.

Joshua says, “It felt weird, but it fed this, ‘Well, at least I'm known for something.’ Or ‘At least I'm affirmed for something.’ But it always felt wrong. So there was never a night that I laid my head on the pillow and felt proud of myself.”

He tried to shut out his guilt by isolating himself and soon became depressed.

“I wanted to die,” he says. “I saw my life and I hated what it was and I felt like I had dug myself such a gigantic hole that I could never get out.”

In a moment of desperation, Joshua cried out to God.

“I'm calling out to this God that I vaguely knew about saying, ‘I don't have the guts to take my life, but I don't want to live,’ recalls Joshua.  And I wish in that moment I would have picked up the phone and called my mom or called someone I trusted but I just stayed there.”

He recommitted himself to the porn industry, yet the guilt remained.

“I'm taking a shower, I'm trying to like wash like this feeling off of me in some regard,” he says. “And I'm just so broken that like I just don't – I just don't understand like where my life can go or how my life can progress.”

After nearly a thousand movies, making over a million dollars, Joshua quit the porn business. However, he still had no peace.

He says, “And that was the most broken I'd ever been because I had the things that I believed would bring me happiness and peace and it didn't work.”

He took a job at a gym as a personal trainer and after nearly three years, he met Hope. On their first date, he confessed his past in the porn industry. Her response caught Joshua by surprise.

He says, “She said it like, so like disarmingly, like not like accusatory, she was like, ‘Well, did you – do you not know who God is?’ She just asked like, "Do you know who God is?"

The following week Joshua attended church with Hope.

“I hear the gospel articulated so clearly and he's telling me that God loves me and He loves me so much that his pursuit of me is relentless,” says Joshua. And I just felt this peace in this moment, and I gave my life to Christ and, you know, lots of tears and celebration, but man, I just felt like this weight that I was carrying was lifted off me.”

A year later Joshua and Hope married and now have three boys. Today, Joshua is a pastor and wants others to find the peace he’s experienced in Christ.

“You could never earn your way to God, so He came down to us because He loved us that much,” he says. “We all experience hurt, we all experience failure, we all have these experiences in our life and the beautiful truth is, is that God's love for you supersedes that. And it can deliver you from whatever hurt you, or whatever you did. That is where God wants to meet you.”