The untold truth of Mia Khalifa

If you haven’t been living on a deserted island with no WiFi, there’s a solid chance that you’ve heard the name Mia Khalifa in passing. At the very least, you’ve probably read about one of her various feuds (the girl is not afraid of a Twitter call-out), but how did the former adult film star make it big enough that she’d fall into the mainstream lexicon?

On the outside, it looks like Khalifa’s short-lived career in adult entertainment is her legacy, but rather, it’s her controversial nature that really skyrocketed her to fame. After her regrettable wardrobe choice for one of her films quite literally had the Internet wanting her head, she became the No. 1 star of one the largest free adult film websites. Nonetheless, there’s a lot more to Khalifa than the three months she spent filming nude scenes as a 21-year-old. As of this writing, the former adult film actress wears a ton of hats — and a lot more clothing in general.

Mia Khalifa was raised in Lebanon

Mia Khalifa isn’t originally from the United States. According to The Washington Post, the star immigrated from Lebanon to a suburb of Washington D.C. when she was 10 years old, but it wasn’t easy. In 2001, America was reeling off the World Trade Center attacks, which made the Middle Eastern star a target for bullying, according to the Daily Beast. She was labeled “the terrorist,” but also told Playboy that she was the “darkest and weirdest girl there.”

“Every brown kid at my school was [labeled a terrorist]. Kids are f—ing brutal. That was the nickname for anyone at my school who was Indian, Middle Eastern, Pakistani — it doesn’t matter,” she told The Daily Beast.

Nonetheless, the star is proud of her heritage and got three tattoos in its honor. Among them is the first line of the Lebanese national anthem written in Arabic and the logo for the Lebanese Forces, “a political party that operated as a right wing Christian militia during the country’s long civil war,” according to The Washington Post. She reportedly got the latter to show “solidarity with [her] father’s political views” after Lebanon was bombed in 2012.

As much as Khalifa loved her upbringing in Lebanon (she even had her first kiss during a visit there), the star can’t return. She told The Daily Dot that the country has “denounced her and she’s no longer welcome” there.

What led Mia Khalifa into the adult entertainment industry?

Khalifa isn’t exactly sure why she got into the adult entertainment industry. It’s certainly out of character for her. In an episode of The Forward podcast with Lance Armstrong, the former adult entertainer admitted that she even feels “uncomfortable showing too much cleavage in public.” So what happened? 

“I don’t know where my head was at. I was 21 and dumb. That’s the only excuse, and it’s not even an excuse, but that’s the only answer I have for it,” she told Armstrong.

The adult film actress got her start in the industry after being approached outside of a Fudruckers in a strip mall in Miami. A man handed her a business card and she thought about it for two solid weeks then “made the mistake of saying yes and going in.” What started because she “just wanted to let loose and rebel a little bit,” snowballed into a haze of conflicting emotions after filming her first scene.

“It was a combination of guilt and shame and very temporary validation, like ‘Oh, I am attractive, someone wants to film me,” she told Armstrong, adding, “I didn’t know how to love myself.”

The star eventually left the business after about three months, but not before becoming the No. 1 searched-for actress on one of the largest adult entertainment websites.

Attempting a 'normal life' was tough for Mia Khalifa

Mia Khalifa only stayed in the industry for three months, but she struggled to find a normal job once she quit. Apparently, if you decide to make adult videos on a whim, you can very quickly become massively famous (just look at how Kim Kardashian turned an intimate tape leak into a $370 million empire). 

However, unlike Kardashian, who didn’t make the decision to air her most intimate moments, Khalifa fought to disappear back into anonymity. In her interview with Lance Armstrong, the actress admitted she “tried to live a normal life,” “went off social media,” and “worked as a bookkeeper for a construction firm and a paralegal.” She told the Daily Beast that she enjoyed working in a law office, but it did become uncomfortable.

“One other thing that I realized that was drastically different than before [entering the adult entertainment industry] was the fact that the male attorneys in the office recognized me and knew who I was,” she told the outlet. “One of them even made some remarks toward me and made me uncomfortable. But karma took care of that one for me, because the firm got shut down and they dissolved that branch.”

Mia Khalifa switched lanes from adult entertainment to sports

Mia Khalifa didn’t just try her hand as a paralegal and bookkeeper. She actually has a more prolific sports-commentating resume than an adult entertainment career, but her enduring popularity in the latter still casts a large shadow. 

In 2017, Khalifa co-hosted a sports show called “Out Of Bounds” with NBA star Gilbert Arenas on Complex TV’s YouTube channel. According to her interview on The Forward, the series was launched with a PR stunt where she pretended to slide into Arena’s DMs (for those who don’t know, Khalifa famously dragged numerous pro athletes for private messaging her in the past). Her management released a statement that claimed Khalifa knew her “comments were completely out of bounds,” which is cheeky, considering the name of the show. Basically, we all should have seen that coming. In an interview with Megan Abbott, the star revealed that she also hosted a second sports show with an ESPN and MLB radio host. Compare that to the short three months she spent doing adult films.

As of this writing, the star has partnered with Twitch TV where she “called a few games” for the NBA’s minor league, according to Playboy. She also livestreams herself cooking and playing video games, and told The Forward that she was developing a cookbook, which seems a little random, but Khalifa is apparently a woman of many talents.

Is Mia Khalifa the next Mark Zuckerberg?

Khalifa somehow managed to take her love of sports into the tech world. You’d never really picture the star in Silicon Valley, yet there she is, building dating app plug-ins and co-founding a sports app. Speaking with the Daily Beast, the former adult entertainer opened up about her app URef, which rates Premier League referees (and lets fans vent about poor calls). According to CrunchBase, it’s only scored a meager $270,000 in funding, and as of this writing, the app has a very modest Twitter following and hasn’t made a huge splash on Facebook, either. 

Luckily, that’s not the only tech endeavor the star has in her repertoire. She also co-founded a Tinder plug-in, which she’s hoping to also launch on Bumble. It’s admittedly a little Black Mirror because it totally takes the humanity out of dating. It automates your swipes and sends out a pre-programmed message to your matches so you don’t actually have to use the app to get a date. “So you can be spittin’ game when you’re sleeping,” Khalifa told the Daily Beast. How many degrees away from hologram dates are we? Should relationships really take an effort at all?

Mia Khalifa was an extremely driven student

Mia Khalifa is one smart cookie, and in school, she was actually quite driven. The star is highly educated, and has a monstrous drive. According to a profile in Playboy, Khalifa learned to speak English while attending a French private school in Beirut. After riding out her middle school years in Maryland, she attended high school at Massanutten Military Academy, a boarding school in Woodstock, Virginia. In a tweet, Khalifa claimed this was both because “[her] parents caught [her] smoking weed,” and the fact that private school helps kids get “accepted into more colleges.”

In her interview with The Forward, the former adult film actress admitted that she graduated early from high school. She attended the University of Texas at El Paso, where she majored in history (and also graduated early, per Playboy), and made ends meet as a bartender and model. On top of that, Khalifa never struggled with the freshman 15. Instead, she told The Forward that she lost 50 pounds through sheer willpower. She cut out soda, exercised and ate lean, which is not an easy feat on a college meal plan.  

“I have an addictive personality, and for once it was addictive in a positive way,” she said.

ISIS sent Mia Khalifa death threats

Mia Khalifa angered the wrong people after filming a racy scene where she wore a hijab while performing the dirty deed. In an interview with 5 Live on BBC Radio, the star admitted that once she found out about the script and wardrobe choice, she told her producer, “You motherf*****s are going to get me killed.” A week later, the death threats started rolling in. One of the scariest was when someone tweeted her an actual Google screenshot of her apartment, leading her to live in a hotel for two weeks before moving.

“The entire Middle East was after me,” she told 5 Live. “Lebanon disowned me. My family disowned me. I had every Muslim on Twitter basically coming after me with proverbial pitchforks.”

Things got worse when ISIS got wind. Speaking with Megan Abbott, Khalifa claimed they photoshopped a picture of her onto someone who was getting beheaded and said, “You’ll be next, you Muslim disgrace.” Khalifa, who is catholic, responded, “Better my head than my t**s, they were expensive,” she told Abbott. ISIS also hacked her Instagram account and used it to post propaganda.  

Khalifa told 5 Live that she probably could have refused to do the scene in the first place, but she was a “moderately demure” 21-year-old and didn’t feel like she could speak up at the time. If anything, she claimed the ISIS threats gave her “a thick skin.” Talk about a silver lining.

Mia Khalifa never expected to be famous

When Mia Khalifa entered the adult entertainment industry, she thought her films would be a total secret. She told The Forward that she figured there were so many adult videos out there, that no one would ever connect it back to her. She didn’t advertise it, no one knew her name, and she didn’t even have any social media accounts at the time. She only told one person — her best girl friend — who thought she was “f—ing crazy.” After quickly gaining immense popularity (the kind where she can’t even get an office job without being recognized for her work), and fielding death threats from ISIS, Khalifa had enough.

“As soon as I gained all that popularity — that was never my intention, so I backed out as soon as I could, even though I had signed a contract with an adult company,” she told The Daily Beast. “But it was never my intention to do anything with this; it was more a dirty little secret that I wanted to have, and something that I wanted to do on my own.”

Mia Khalifa didn't get rich off of adult films

Mia Khalifa didn’t get into the adult entertainment industry for the money. During her interview with Armstrong, she admitted that her parents had been helping her out, so she wasn’t under much financial pressure. It’s a good thing because, as it turns out, filming adult videos is not very lucrative. 

In a tweet, Khalifa admitted she didn’t make very much money in her three months in the industry, where she filmed a total of 21 videos (nine of them were solo and a dozen were with partners). “People think I’m racking [sic] in millions from porn. Completely untrue. I made a total of around $12,000 in the industry and never saw a penny again after that,” she wrote.

Despite the paltry paycheck, Khalifa’s director Steve, who wouldn’t reveal his last name, told Playboy that he was shocked by the actress’ exit from the industry. He had never received a letter of resignation from an adult film star before. “I remember when she came in with a letter of resignation. I said, ‘Why? You’re the biggest star in the world,'” he said. 

Although it’s unclear exactly how — which perhaps means this number should also be taken with a grain of salt — Khalifa has since amassed an estimated $3 million net worth, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

Sliding into Mia Khalifa's DMs doesn't end well

In her Playboy profile, Mia Khalifa revealed that she married her high school sweetheart in 2011, but they separated in 2014 (the same year she launched her adult film career), and divorced in 2016. Not much else is known about the star’s love life beyond her fiancé and the many men she’s rejected — one of them allegedly being Drake.

Speaking with WQAM’s The Page Q Sports Show (via Billboard), Khalifa admitted that a celeb whose name “rhymes with… ‘rake,'” went riding through her DMs with his woes (or, more accurately, some sort of pickup line). It’s not clear what he said, but we’re guessing it was along the lines of “Mia do you love me? Are you riding?” Regardless, the former adult film star called their exchange “flattering” but also “so cringeworthy.”  

Drizzy, however, isn’t the only one who’s allegedly tried to digitally woo Khalifa. In the past, she’s called out NFL stars Duke Williams and Chad Kelly for sliding into her DMs, but overall, Khalifa considered herself unlucky in love. “I will never find a guy I deem to be perfect or normal since I’m not perfect — and am nowhere near normal,” she told Playboy. Of course, she turned out to be totally wrong. According to the Daily Beast, the star is engaged to Robert Sandberg (above), a chef at the Michelin-rated restaurant Kong Hans Kælder. Is he helping her with that cookbook?

A viral TikTok meme made Mia Khalifa a household name

If the hijab video wasn’t the thing that sent Mia Khalifa spiraling into mainstream fame, it was the karaoke video app TikTok. In February 2018, the YouTube rap duo iLOVEFRiDAY released a diss-track about the former adult film star that subsequently became part of a viral — and rather inescapable — TikTok meme. Apparently, the entire thing was a misunderstanding.

In a YouTube interview with DJ Smallz Eyes 2, iLOVEFRiDAY member SmokeHijabi (above, right) admitted that the duo penned the track after Khalifa allegedly called her disrespectful to Mulsim women. She had posted a photo of herself smoking what appeared to be marijuana while wearing a hijab, while Khalifa made the infamous hijab adult video. Who was to judge? Apparently not Khalifa, because according to Genius, her tweet was fabricated.

Nonetheless, SmokeHijabi posted a now-deleted call-out video on Twitter, then recorded the track with her bandmate Xeno Carr. A viral meme was born (and unfortunately fails to go away).

Mia Khalifa is working on accepting her past

Unlike some of the adult entertainers who came before her, Mia Khalifa is absolutely mortified that she ever jumped into the industry — even if it was just a short three-month detour in a life otherwise filled with lucrative, creative endeavors. She told the Daily Beast that she felt like she had to publicly own up to her shame after having a “terrible radio interview” with some “D-list station in Tampa” where they introduced her as an adult film star. She subsequently had a major outburst and was cut from the air.

“I’m ashamed of my past. And the shame, in turn, becomes anger, and makes me lash out and react the way I did. So the only way to fix that is to take control of my own narrative, put it out there, and let my story be heard,” she told The Daily Beast.

Getting over the past has not been easy for Khalifa. She claimed that she’d go back and change things if she could. In her interview with Megan Abbott, she also admitted that she’s still working on “fully [accepting and being] comfortable with [her] past to the point where” she can handle it being brought up in a public setting, and not feeling intense shame over it.  

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