Celebrities Speak Out Against Pornography: ‘Destroyed My Brain’
By Movieguide® Contributor
From stars like singer Billie Eilish to actor Terry Crews, more celebrities are speaking out about the dangers of pornography.
“Any time a celebrity speaks up about porn’s harmful effects, countless more people have the opportunity to see what the research is saying,” said Fight the New Drug, a secular organization that advocates for a porn-free lifestyle.
The organization shared quotes from seven celebrities, including Billie Eilish, Terry Crews, Orlando Bloom, Marisol Nichols, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Radnor and Juliette Binoche.
Actor Josh Radnor said, “Porn peddles selfishness, domination, and oppression—all terrible qualities to bring to a relationship. It strips women of personality, agency, and dimensionality, reducing them to objects who exist simply for men’s sexual pleasure.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Radnor, a filmmaker and actor whom many know from the hit TV show HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, told FTND that porn is “a pretty epic disaster physically, psychologically, and spiritually” and spoke passionately about its devastating effects on individual relationships and society as a whole. He joins a growing list of celebrities, such as Rashida Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Terry Crews, who aren’t afraid to speak their minds on this important issue.
“Those who speak out against it are reliably tagged as religious nuts or prudes or puritans or anti-sex,” he said. “I had just gotten really tired of the refrain ‘Everybody watches porn.’ It’s crazy how often that’s said, as if all the data has been collected and the discussion is finished. It’s a tactic to get porn more and more normalized.”
Singer Billie Eilish confessed, “I think it really destroyed my brain, and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn…It got to a point where I couldn’t watch anything else—unless it was violent, I didn’t think it was attractive.”
Actor Terry Crews said, “My issue was, and is, with pornography, that it changes the way you think about people. People become objects, people become body parts; they become things to be used rather than people to be loved.”
Crews shared about his addiction on the “Armchair Expert” podcast this July. A frequent viewer of porn, he felt guilty about his addiction and the effect it had on his family.
“I got married in 1989 to the most beautiful woman on earth. I thought that once I got married, the porn would go away. I don’t need to tell her about anything. It was a phase. I’m going to be out of it; it’s going to be great,” he said.
But this wasn’t the case. He eventually cheated on his wife, which led him to go to a rehab center for his porn addiction. After Crews beat his addiction, he and his wife worked things out.
In 2023, concerns around pornography go beyond just viewing and addiction as AI-deepfake videos have emerged. News sources reported that some students took footage of a classmate and combined it with an explicit video.
AFP shared the experiences of American teen 14-year-old Ellis and her classmates: “The images of Ellis and a friend, also a victim, were lifted from Instagram, their faces then placed on naked bodies of other people. Other students — all girls — were also targeted, with the composite photos shared with other classmates on Snapchat.
She told AFP, “It looked real, like the bodies looked like real bodies. And I remember being really, really scared…I’ve never done anything of that sort.”
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