She hails from Golden, Colorado, about 20 miles west of Denver. A chance encounter aimed her toward adult. "I was a sophomore-junior in high school when I was hitchhiking to a concert in Red Rocks and a girl, who was a dancer, picked us up. I was interested in her, intrigued by her - and it just struck a chord. I graduated high school, started dancing young. I came into the business wandering aimlessly, looking for some direction, which a lot of us, that's how we get into it. I owned a striptease company in Colorado."
    The stripping led to adult video, again more by accident than design. "I was looking to up my reputation by doing magazines, and I kind of fell into the adult situation. I never thought of doing adult as adding value [to my featuring career]. I thought the magazines would do it for me. I wound up hanging out on a set, somebody didn't show up to shoot with my girlfriend Alexis [DeVell], and they asked me to jump in. That's how I came into it."
    She started doing videos in 1992, and "hit it hard in '93. I shot for Scotty Fox at Legend, I shot a few movies - Curious - various things that he directed, I did an all-girl/lesbian movie with Paul Norman on my third or fourth trip out here from Colorado, and he offered me a contract as a director - going under contract with him. Up to that time, nobody had done anything like that before." The unusual ploy - being under contract to a freelance director, not a company - paid off: she won three New Starlet awards in 1994, from AVN, Adam Film World, and XRCO. She had a one-year contract with VCA, which ended with the multi-award winning Shock. She called it "The hardest shoot I ever did. I was actually on set for many many many many many hours before I shot my first scene that day. At the end of it, you look back, and it's one of the most awesome, more proud things I have done in this business."
    Director Jim Holliday met her the first day she was in California. "I hired her for Sorority Sex Kittens in a heartbeat. That was a no-brainer. She's my number-one draft choice. The word 'sweetheart' was sewn into her personality. [As a sex performer] she's a bundle of energy, she's hot, and for somebody cute, she fucks like a firecracker. And no one has ever said anything negative about her."
    LaVeaux says she always wanted to do something like what she's doing now. "I always wanted to be an actress, a model, and I wanted to help people. Modeling is completely out because I was too short. I'm 5' 1", five-foot-one-and-a-half on a good day. Acting, I had fooled around in theater when I was in school. Helping people: In what other business can I actually act, be a model, play dress-up every day, and help people? I believe I help people by what I do. Releasing their sexual anxieties. People can look at these movies and say 'Wow. I'm not the only one.' Or 'I was wondering how I could get myself out of that situation.' I want people to live and learn through me and my experiences."
    Retirement or resting on her laurels is not in the cards for the diminutive sex star. She's heading into production, establishing Shayla Productions offices in Australia/New Zealand and Canada. "I'm going over there for a month to announce it at the New Zealand Erotic Show and in Melbourne. I just got done shooting in Vancouver. I'm going to places that haven't been too saturated or too shot, or gotten a bad taste in their mouth about adult production goes. I want to be the pioneer and open it all up and make it all good. Local talent, local directors, local music - all of my music on my Australian movie is all Australian musicians."
    She's branching out in other ways, too. She's started doing voice acting for Japanese hentai cartoons. "That's something I can do. It felt really really good. Anybody who wants voice-overs, call me. I just finished doing voice-overs for DVD releases with Jim Holliday for VCA. Naked Came the Stranger and some Henry Paris. He has an artsy way of doing things. I like stuff like that. I like old [porn] because it's so fun. I was inquisitive with Jim when I was doing those voiceovers, and he told me sometimes they would shoot a scene for a whole day. That's why they had fluffers. I thought, 'Holy cow!'"
    And the next stop may just be mainstream acting. "I also just did a lead in a Showtime late-night piece called Passion Before Midnight. It was fun. Good experience."
    So maybe Shayla will be coming to a TV near you on the broadcast side. The sky's the limit for this ambitious pornstress.

Written by Tod Hunter.. Tod's website is: www.tod-hunter.net

To see more photos and to purchase many of her films, we suggest Toyboxxx.com