Against All Odds: The Trials, Tribulations & Triumphs of CJ Miles

This is the cover story of the October issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—They called it a competition, but CJ Miles didn’t see it that way. She says Brazzers House 4 was more about having fun than anything else. “Oh my god it was the best,” Miles tells AVN. “I’m not there to compete, I’m just there to experience.” Miles stayed in the same house for three days with 12 other girls who were vying for two exclusive contracts for Brazzers, which debuted the eight-episode season in September. “Every day I got closer to all the girls,” CJ says. “Even if I don’t win, I feel like I win a lot of friendship.” It’s that kind of positivity that has endeared the petite Filipino star to producers, collaborators and fans alike since her splashy arrival. The 4-foot-7 performer may only have made her mainstream porn debut a year ago, but she’s been a high-profile model since the late 2000s and was part of the first wave of creators to join OnlyFans in 2017. “I love what I do now,” CJ says. “Because if I don’t like it, then I’m not gonna do it.” Dressed to thrill in a black-and-red racing jacket, Tom Ford yoga pants and high heels, CJ is sipping a tall Passion Fruit Mimosa at a rooftop cafe in the Mission Beach area of San Diego. It’s the third Friday in September and tonight she is the headliner at nearby Exposé Gentlemen’s Club—she started her feature dancing career in March. Miles flew to San Diego from her home in Miami last night after another full week of content shoots for OnlyFans, a platform where she averages $150,000 a month. She’ll return to Florida on Sunday for a few days before going to Philadelphia to feature at Cheerleaders next weekend—and then it’s time to relax. CJ will stamp her passport to Dubai first and then hit Bali for a month before heading to the Maldives. “Because I’ve been working so much I need to take a vacation,” CJ tells me. She explains that the past year has been a blur of studio scenes, content collabs, dance bookings and photoshoots. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. “It makes me excited,” says Miles, who at press time had more than 2.4 million followers on Instagram. “I’m always booked to shoot content or porn. It makes me busy. … Sometimes I rest when I travel, so it’s good. It makes me balanced.” Brazzers introduced Miles to studio porn in October 2022 in separate scenes with Zac Wild and Keiran Lee—and then added one with Manuel Ferrara in November. The porn heavyweight typed Miles’ name on the call sheet more than 15 times in the past year. So inviting her to be in the first Brazzers House production in five years was a no-brainer. “We’ve been working with CJ since she began doing mainstream studio work,” a Brazzers rep tells AVN. “She has a great personality and is extremely outgoing as a performer. Brazzers House 4 was a natural fit for her to showcase her many, many talents. “In Brazzers House 4, CJ brought a major spark of energy and excitement to the mix. It’s safe to say her fans will not be let down by the high-octane performance she delivered during filming.” Miles delivered her first scene with two guys for Brazzers this year, squaring off with Mick Blue and Lucas Frost in Robbing the Sex Freaks Part 2; she also threw down in ZZ’s Luna Star: Seduce & Destroy in a threeway with Luna and Cassidy Luxe. “Brazzers members love CJ,” the ZZ rep continues. “She’s amassed quite a fanbase on the site since her first scene on ZZ in 2022. She’s a uniquely skilled talent, and we’re thrilled she is getting the recognition she deserves.” Mick Blue, the AVN Hall of Famer from Austria who is the only man to three-peat as AVN Male Performer of the Year from 2015-17, agrees. Now an exclusive contract stud for ZZ and one of the hosts of Brazzers House 4, Blue tells AVN that CJ impressed him. “Brazzers House 4 was definitely one of the greatest projects I’ve ever done in my whole career,” Blue says. “I don’t think there’s any bad scene that’s going to come out. Everything was absolutely amazing and obviously CJ did very well. She’s a real firecracker with her personality and also the way she has sex.” Blue says CJ emerged as a serious contender to receive a contract after her memorable showing. “But even besides that, personality-wise and also the way how she presents herself and what she brings, she’s a star who shines in our industry,” he adds. Fellow AVN Hall of Fame producer/performer Jules Jordan knows CJ’s ability to rise to the occasion, too. The seasoned shooter had released five scenes featuring the sensational spinner at press time with more on the way. “I’ve been a CJ Miles fan for over a decade,” Jordan tells AVN. “She’s been an online/social media favorite of mine as long as I can remember. I would DM her for years to no avail… Finally, she started doing OnlyFans and worked with someone I knew who had her contact. Needless to say we finally linked up and shot some amazing content. “She has an amazing fashion sense and insane sexuality. She is also incredibly fun to have on set. She’s like a cartoon character with her personality. It was all I expected to finally be able to shoot her!” Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, Miles grew up poor and experienced homelessness as a teenager. Despite her childhood circumstances she graduated from college with a degree in computer engineering and got a job at Dell doing technical support in a call center for two years.  “When you call the 1-800 number, it’s all routed to Asia cause the labor is cheap,” says Miles, whose former classmates now are all programmers in the UK.  While CJ worked at Dell she dated one of the trainers, an American from Texas who was three years older than her. She was 24. “He was training me. It’s all Americans there, so everybody loves Asian girls,” CJ says. “So anyway after two years he went back to Texas. And I was like OK, I don’t know what to do in the Philippines now. “Maybe I’ll go to Japan and be an entertainer. Because in Dell I made 100 dollars a month. That’s all you can make—even if you finish college. “And I’m like, how will I support my whole family? So I was thinking how will I get to America? There’s no way you can come here if you don’t have any family that can petition you.” Miles says her former boyfriend agreed to petition to get her into the US. “So within 90 days I have to get married to him or else I’m going to get deported,” she says. “That’s the rule. It’s the fastest way to get to America is a fiancee or spouse. “But when I got to Texas his sister told me that he was married the whole time I was dating him in the Philippines. As soon as I got there he just divorced his wife. So now when I got there I feel like he regretted everything that he did. But I’m there already, so he feels like I’m a burden.” Miles tells AVN her ex physically abused her during a six-month span in 2006, after she moved into his home in Orange, Texas. “And I couldn’t leave because I don’t know where to go and he’s the one who petitioned me,” CJ says. “And I don’t want to go back home because I don’t have anything. “So I just stayed with him for six months. I don’t have any social security number, I cannot work. “All my friends were like you should go home. But I said I’m not going back to the Philippines. And then his sister and his mom called the immigration and tell them, ‘My son is beating her up.’ Because they couldn’t take it anymore because it’s all girls in the family, in one house. “So immigration wrote me back and they gave me citizenship. That’s how I got my papers.” CJ’s troubles were not over, though. “Then his sister’s like, ‘OK, you can leave now you have a paper.’ Because I couldn’t tell to the police what he was doing to me because I feel like I owe him how I got in America. I’m like I don’t know where to go?” CJ adds. One day when her ex was at work and she was still staying at his house, she noticed he had a MySpace page, where he was talking to a lot of girls. Miles says she hadn’t heard of MySpace, but she decided to create her own profile with one photo. Soon after, she received a message from a photographer offering to fly her to San Diego for a photoshoot. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to pay you $500.’ I’m like OK, I was so happy,” CJ recalls. “And thank god he’s really a legit photographer. He’s a Playboy, FHM, Maxim photographer. “So when I got [to San Diego], he’s like so nice. He told me, ‘Do you have any friends here in America?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t know anybody.’” So the photographer introduced her to Francine Dee, an established model who already had made a name for herself in the import scene modeling at car shows and for various magazines. Dee also happened to be half Filipino, half Chinese. “And I was like, finally I can talk to someone that’s my language,” CJ says. “And I told her my husband is beating me up and she told me go to Vegas and ‘I have a job for you.’ “So I went back to Texas and then I went back to Vegas and she picked me up. Then as soon as she picked me up at the airport we went to [the Spearmint Rhino gentlemen’s club].” Even though Miles had no idea where she was going or what she was doing on her first night at the Rhino with Dee, she made $10,000 by sitting and talking with some of the high rollers who were in town for the World Series of Poker. It turned out to be a sign of things to come. CJ moved in with Dee—who is now retired from modeling—and began going everywhere with her, building her own profile in the process. Miles recalls how Francine positioned cameras all over her house so that her fans could pay to watch her. “And before OnlyFans she had like fans that subscribe to her,” CJ says. “It was 24 hours. So all her fans knows me because of that. And then she bring me to Hawaii, to San Francisco to do import shows. “I didn’t know she’s famous. She didn’t tell me. So everywhere she goes for like stripper or car magazine, I go with her. So every time there’s competitions, it’s like, ‘Who’s the little girl? Who’s the new girl?’ “So everybody knows me from that. She changed my life.” Miles since has lost touch with Dee, but they left off on a good note. “She taught me everything,” CJ tells AVN. “How to open a bank account, how to save money. How to do a website—she’s really smart.” Miles stripped at the Rhino in Vegas for 12 years, becoming one of the club’s top earners and sending money back to her family in Manila the whole time. “It’s like school for me,” she says. “I go to school every night with her, because I don’t know how to drive. I don’t know how to go anywhere. So wherever she go, I go.” Miles also recalls doing a lot of free photoshoots with various photographers during that time. She considered the time spent an investment in her brand—and she was having a blast. “Because I just want to be out there,” she says. “I was just having fun. So that’s how people knows me—from her, from her website, from all of the shoots that I did for free. “Because I was making money at the Rhino, so I was happy. So that was my just for fun. She’s the best. I wish she hadn’t quit. She would be good in everything.” Not long after she started dancing at the Rhino, CJ met the guy who would become her next boyfriend—a professional poker player who came to the club. “So I dated him because I don’t know anybody. He brings me to poker games,” she says. “And now I’m in the poker magazines because I sit with him.” He made Miles’ first website, ILoveCJMIles.com, and also got her onto billboards and into music videos for artists such as Snoop Dogg, The Game and E-40. “He believed in me,” says CJ, who would part ways with him after about a year. “He saw me as a business because he’s business-minded.” Miles stopped dancing at the Rhino more than six years ago after purchasing her first house in Vegas. “As soon as I bought a house I was like, fuck I don’t want to work anymore at the club,” CJ says. “Like I need to change my life because I was like I’m going to be successful if I wake up early in the morning. “That’s how rich people are. I want to be rich. I want to wake up early. “Because I go to work at like midnight and I get home from work at 9 a.m. So it’s like backwards. I don’t have a day life, I don’t see days. I was just burned out. I’m happy I did the 12 years. “I support my whole family in the Philippines. So I bought my dad, my mom, my sister, my brother a house before I bought myself a house. “Because I grew up homeless. So my fear in life is to go back to that life. And I don’t want my family to experience what I experienced.” Now she also pays the tuitions for her adult niece and nephew’s college education as well as expenses for two toddlers in Manila. “There’s four of them—two in college and two babies. Rent, groceries, everything,” CJ says. “Because there’s nothing really to make in the Philippines. “It’s why I work hard. I really love my job. From dancing to OnlyFans and now porn. I really enjoy everything.” Miles moved to Miami in 2017 to start fresh. She still danced on occasion to supplement her income, but not as regularly as when she was in Vegas. That was until the late industry executive Bill Fox urged her to quit stripping and focus on building her OnlyFans. “I think my first year I’m making $30,000, then it becomes 60, 90, 100 per month,” CJ says. She says it was during the lockdown of 2020 that her OnlyFans income began to skyrocket. Then about two years ago she broke up with another ex-boyfriend, who also had become her main content partner. “And I was like, ‘How will I find a guy to fuck me?’” Miles says. “Because I started boy/girl, just like POV. When we broke up, I don’t know where to find guys.” She searched dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge without any luck. And then a friend suggested she message veteran adult performer Oliver Flynn, who then told her to reach out to Brazzers contract star Keiran Lee. That was when she realized that Lee actually attempted to contact her a while ago on Instagram. CJ also looked at her whiteboard, where she would always brainstorm about how to grow her OnlyFans. One of her ideas was to get into studio porn. “So I messaged Keiran, ‘I want to be in porn.' Like after a week he flew me out and then I did him, Manuel Ferrara, Zac Wild and after that Jules Jordan and it’s like been nonstop,” Miles says. CJ even signed at the Brazzers booth at the 2023 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, where she stayed for a month so she could also perform in five more scenes for Brazzers. Soon after that—when she was tired of living in a hotel—she bought another house in Vegas, which she now rents out as a location for ZZ. CJ also owns three condos in Miami—two of which she rents out and one that she lives in. “I’m trying to buy more to rent out because my job is not forever,” she says. When she thinks about her monthly income, Miles says she isn’t about to settle. “I always think I could be better,” CJ says. “I always like manifest in the morning, how could I be better? “You can always be better. That’s why in Miami I don’t stop working. I am collabing with a lot of people for OnlyFans. Because OnlyFans is more money than shooting in porn. “But in porn I’m just putting myself out there. Because I want to be out there. So now like I get more fans, too.” Miles tells AVN she never watched porn before she was in it. She also never googles herself, so she’s been surprised when someone says he already knows who she is when they meet for the first time. “Manuel Ferrara and Johnny Sins knows me already, long time ago,” she says. “I don’t know anybody. Even Asa Akira was like ‘I’ve known you for a long time.’ I’m like, ‘How? How do you guys know me?’ Because I don’t know what’s out there. I’m busy doing my own life.” Miles says when she first met Alex Jones that he told her he was her “biggest fan,”and that there was a poster of her on the wall at his high school. “Now when I call him I say, ‘Alex, can we shoot together? I’m going to give you more poster,’” CJ jokes. Miles says she was 4 years old when her father went to Saudi Arabia to work so he could save money for her college tuition. “My mom left when I was 13 and my sister got married, so I was homeless after that. That’s why I’m really independent,” she says, adding that she would stay at her classmates’ homes. “I don’t have a place to stay—from 13 to 16, that’s why.” She continues, “My childhood was the worst. Sometimes when you have a bad past you forget all of it. That’s why my memory is not good because I try to not remember. I think it’s better. Because I always focus on the future.” Miles tells AVN when she tried to tell her story before that she would always cut it short because it was too hard. “Because I don’t want to cry,” she says. “From how I got here and my ex. I don’t want to put my ex down, like, oh he beats me up. This is not about him. I feel like I’m grateful for him that he brought me to America or else I wouldn’t be here. “I’m sure there’s a lot of girls that has this experience, too. But it’s not for me to put him down. It’s for me like how I surpass everything and I was grateful for him. I told my sister, too. I’m not gonna put him down, because if not for him I wouldn’t be here. “With my mom, too, I never have grudges. I never have grudges with anybody because it’s gonna kill me. “Like I hope my mom has a good life and a good family that takes care of her.” She says her mom “hated us.” “We were always locked in the room, no food. It was like that,” she says. “When I got older, I put myself in her situation. I think she was still 18 when she got pregnant with my sister. And she’s like really cute like me, like small. Like a Barbie girl. “And she got pregnant and I feel she’s not done with her life at that time. And when she see us, she hated us—me and my sister. "So she never love us. She never say, ‘I love you,’ to me and my sister and my brother. My mom beat us up, too, so when my ex beat me up I was trained for this.” When her dad left for Saudi Arabia and came back, the family was separated. “My sister got married. I’m somewhere else, my brother’s somewhere else,” CJ says. “He has to put us back altogether, so it was hard.” She adds, “It makes me tough, too. A strong person. An independent person. Because when I was 13, I decide for myself. “I walk to school. I always walked to school for two hours. When I was young, I walked to school—no shoes—me and my sister. In America, I feel like poor here is different from poor in the Third World. “I grew up, we sleep on the floor. So for me, everything is a blessing.” Now when Miles returns to her country, she always buys food and feeds the kids who are on the streets and in the orphanage. “But I don’t post that, because I don’t want to post that shit,” she says. “For them in one day, that’s a lot. I think I like kids better. Because I don’t know what the older people do with their money with drugs.” She encourages her friends to do it, too. “I told my friends, for $100 you can feed 20 kids,” Miles says. “And buy like a lot of toys. Every time there’s a typhoon I send my sister or I ask my friends to like donate 20 dollars each. My friends will donate and then we send it to the kids, like a sack of rice. “So when there’s typhoon or something happen and then my sister send it to the mayor and they give it away. And my sister take a picture of what I send, just to know that it goes to the right way or to the right people.” Photography by @devindelsanto.ph