This feature article appears in the July 2025 issue of X3 magazine, dedicated to capturing the genuine personalities, passions, and stories of emerging and established stars. X3 is published by XBIZ Media.
These days, getting ahold of Chloe Amour on the weekend can be tough. She might ditch her phone, as was the case on a recent weekend while celebrating her birthday with family at Disneyland, riding the rides and taking in some sun.
“My dad and my brother had never been to Disneyland, so I basically gave them a VIP tour,” she says cheerily. “I didn’t check my phone for anything — no news, no social media.”
No texts, no emails, just a respite from work for a couple of days to share an experience with loved ones at “The Happiest Place on Earth.” It sounds like something anyone should be able to enjoy once in a while — but the Chloe Amour of 13 years ago, just making her adult debut, probably would never have considered it.
“When I first got into the industry, my schedule was pretty jam-packed,” Amour recalls. “It was like, ‘OK, you’re going to go to Arizona. Then you’re going to go to Florida, and then you’re going to come to LA.’ I was working every day, working doubles.”
On and on it went like that, for more than five years.
“At the time, it just felt normal,” she shrugs. “Like, ‘I guess I’m supposed to do this.’”
Such an intense work ethic seems entirely understandable for someone who grew up in an economically challenged household that often struggled to make ends meet. Yet for all Amour’s drive and determination, burnout was inevitable.
It arrived suddenly one day in late 2018 when she endured a panic attack. The tightness in her chest and shortness of breath took hold in the run up to a flight from Los Angeles to New York, where she was due to feature dance over an entire weekend.
Amour called her agent to cancel. She knew she’d have to pay fees for prearranged flights and a hotel. She also figured she’d be upsetting a club owner and some fans. But it wasn’t just that weekend she had to contend with. Amour’s feature dance schedule was completely booked for the next three months. So on top of shoots during the week, it was going to be air travel, taxis, dancing and just being “on” for three days straight each of the next 12 weekends.
This time, she just couldn’t.
“It’s very lonely on the road, very tiring,” says Amour. “I just got super overwhelmed.”
A Break From the Grind
When the calendar flipped to 2019, Amour checked herself into an LA-area wellness center. Instead of working seven days a week for the following three months, she engaged in various modalities of therapy — talk, group, sound, ESMR — alongside yoga and other restorative activities.
Amour left the wellness center not only feeling rested, but also with a greater understanding of herself. She had recognized that living through childhood trauma. stemming from what she terms “family dysfunction,” had caused her unwittingly to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms and behavior patterns.
One exercise that helped Amour recognize the roots of her mental health issues was drawing up a timeline of impactful events in her life. Starting from birth, she plotted her past on a single line, connecting the dots of her trauma.
When it was all laid out in front of her, a doctor told Amour something basic yet transformative: “Your emotions are valid.”
This, she says, was crucial to her recovery.
“I didn’t really get that from my family,” she explains.
Amour has been diagnosed with anxiety, PTSD, depression, OCD and ADHD. She manages it all with medication, meditation and Reiki healing. She also hasn’t had an alcoholic beverage in nine years.
“I’ve even done biohacking and things like that to help regenerate myself,” she shares. “Cryo chambers, PEMF mats, red light therapy that’s medical grade, sound baths, moon baths… It’s a forever practice. I’ve learned there’s not a cure-all. The medication is just there to help keep me stable as I go through lifestyle changes.”
On Her Own Terms
After taking all of 2019 off to refresh her mind, body and soul, Amour prepared to return to adult in early 2020 — just as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted things for her and everyone else in the world.
Frustrated with shooting restrictions in LA, Amour moved to Las Vegas, where some of her family resided, as well as her boyfriend of about two years. She produced OnlyFans clips and shot for a studio here and there, but she did not promote herself and was not signed with an agency. Being with her partner meant she didn’t have to work, so she took advantage of the period of financial flexibility to keep learning more about herself.
“I continued to do intensive workshops,” she says. “One was called ‘Finding Your True Self,’ where you’re in a community of people who are all trying to understand themselves, and you’re just like, ‘It’s OK, you’re supposed to cry. Just let it all out.’”
As her self-discovery journey continued, Amour began to rethink her situation with her Vegas boyfriend. They’d started discussing marriage and family early in their relationship, but the timing had never been quite right. Now, in the wake of all of her recent intensive therapy and self-reflection, she found herself stepping back and reconsidering. He’d been married once before, and she was closer in age to his kids than she was to him.
“I started to think, ‘If I marry this person, have a child with this person, I’m not just tied to this person, I’m going to have to be integrated into a blended family,’” she remembers. “Because I’m a child of divorce, it started to trigger things in me and I got cold feet.”
The two broke up in February 2023, though they remain friends. That was when Amour again began preparing for a full-blown return to adult.
Now in a far more grounded state than she was in when she originally broke into the industry at age 21, Amour has once again fixed all her focus on her adult career — but this time around, with more intention and prioritizing work-life balance.
Instead of saying “yes” to everything, Amour is more selective in the projects she takes on. She’s also pursuing a greater sense of creative fulfillment, compiling a list of studios, directors and performers with whom she hopes to collaborate. There are also particular types of scenes she wants to shoot.
Though reluctant to disclose too many details about projects already in the works that will help her check some of those bucket-list items off her list, Amour does reveal two future goals. One is to star in a feature for the first time. The other?
“I’ve said this before and it’s always been kind of a joke, but not really,” she confides. “I’ve always wanted to do a gangbang before I retire.”
The Only Constant Is Change
During the five years when Amour was all but away from the business, a fresh crop of performers and producers showed up. She is still getting to know those folks, and admits to sometimes feeling self-conscious around them. Occasionally she feels compelled to explain, to newer colleagues, her friendliness with other industry people she worked with in the early stages of her career.
“Where you’re at in your career is where I was at when I left,” she tells them. “Now I’m back.”
While she’s happy to have returned to the industry and is looking forward to scaling new heights as a performer, Amour concedes she’s faced some challenges while reintegrating. There is some added stress due to frequent travel back to LA, since she prefers to keep Las Vegas as her home base.
“I live in the mountains in Summerlin, so it’s more laid back and peaceful,” she explains. “I feel like I can breathe here. When I go to LA, I feel like I’m just in work mode.”
She’s also still adjusting to an industry with somewhat different expectations of talent.
“It’s crazy how much this business has changed,” Amour says. “It’s constantly changing and it will continue to evolve and change.”
One particular shift she’s noticed is the heightened value placed on social media presence. Studios and agencies demand that performers interact with followers online, which is time-consuming. This is something she occasionally lets slide when she feels the need to take a break away from her phone.
Spending too much time on Instagram, Amour says, can be a little demoralizing. Not because she worries about living up to unrealistic beauty standards, which so many other women struggle with on the platform, but because of engagement data.
“There’s restrictions on my account because of my career choice,” she laments. “Somebody else on the platform can be showing way more skin or have more provocative captions and videos — but because they don’t do porn, they’re allowed to do that. That’s what’s frustrating for me. The app will block my visibility, which affects my numbers, and the companies are looking at the numbers.”
Sometimes, she says, it seems like talent isn’t enough to succeed anymore.
Still, the industry has also evolved in ways that Amour welcomes — especially this more centered version of her. She says performers and crew members more openly express their opinions, feelings and needs, both on and off the set. If the energy on a shoot isn’t right, it can be fixed, she says. If safety precautions are lacking, they will be upgraded at the behest of workers.
In Amour’s mind, this enhanced comfort level and the new channels that performers manage for exposure are boons to the creative process. They benefit the performers, many of whom haven’t been around as long as Amour and therefore don’t fully recognize and appreciate the improved landscape of adult.
“It’s really cool for them to be able to create more, do what they love and run their business the way they want to run it,” she says. “They’re able to showcase their creativity in more ways. That’s the blessing of OnlyFans and social media.”
Thinking back on her early Playboy shoots, at age 21, Amour confesses, “I didn’t know what I was doing! The photographer wanted me to be more edgy, mad, sexy — looking like I was a rock star bitch. I left thinking, ‘I don’t know how to be sexy. Am I doing this right?’”
Today’s Chloe Amour is more comfortable in her skin. When she’s not having fun on set or at theme parks, she’s enjoying a hike, karaoke or “anything that’s artistic,” she says. That could be a Vegas show, some stand-up comedy or a movie.
Amour hopes to find a romantic partner eventually — probably someone with a career outside the adult industry, since she has found dating people in the business can come with its own unique problems.
When she does meet the right person, they’ll be treated to someone who’s “done the work,” as they say. Someone adventurous, honest, trustworthy, kind and loyal — the five words she uses to describe her true self: the long-elusive, fully realized person inside her. The Chloe Amour she’s finally found, at long last.
To view the full pictorial in X3 magazine, click here.
