Julia Fox opens up about her time as a dominatrix: “I got self-worth and self-esteem”

Julia Fox, who used to work as a teen dominatrix, recently posed for a series of risqué photos inside the New York dungeon where she previously worked. Speaking candidly with writer Cat Marnell, Fox said the shoot made her go “full robot.”

“As I was walking down the stairs, I disassociated,” the Uncut Gems star told Paper. “As I was entering, I went back to how I would shut myself off and then perform whatever it was that I needed to be: A mean, evil teacher, domineering mother or nun or nurse, or whoever it was.”

The star, who grew up in New York but was born in Milan, said that the gig provided her with “self-worth and self-esteem.” Fox took on the role of a dominatrix whilst she was still in high school as an 18-year-old and continued into her early twenties. Despite enjoying what she did, Fox always knew the career wasn’t what she wanted to pursue later on in life. “I talked to some girls and they’d been there for like, 10 plus years. I remember thinking to myself, like, ‘I don’t want that.’”

The dungeon itself was host to five differently themed rooms catering to everything from naughty nurse fantasies to wrestling fetishes and BDSM. Fox described the wrestling room as one of her favourites and recalled a time a customer paid her and another woman to wrestle. “And then we beat him up a little bit, too. That was actually fun. I remember just laughing my ass off,” she said.

Kanye West’s former muse said that she’d be given a variety of jobs and would normally be given a heads up on what type of role her clients wanted her to play. “The headmistress — who’s like a manager — she would be like, ‘He has this specific fetish,’ you know, whatever…Sometimes you get to meet them beforehand in a little consultation room, but a lot of the time, not really. You just go in blindly with a little bit of knowledge and you just stretch it and make the most of it, you know?”

Ultimately, Fox said it was the female-centric atmosphere that Fox found most gratifying, which helped her filter out the “toxic men in my life. And the new men in my life became my clients who adored me — who literally let me piss on them and do whatever I wanted.”