Nicole Raneri is a hot tattooed tomboy with an obsession for fix gear bikes and a love of all things dark, dank and downright satanic. Sound cool? She is. But that’s not the persona most are familiar with…
Her alter-ego - the legendary Burning Angel model and performer Kylee Kross - is renowned for being one of the first heavily inked women to grace our screens as a porn star, transforming the face of the industry and paving the way for hundreds of girls to follow in her footsteps. Newly based in London, the pair are fighting it out to pursue conflicting ideals: Nicole wants to play with bikes and learn mechanics, and Kylee is eager to bare all in her latest feature length, Crushing on Kylee. We talk to the real Ms Kross about sex, love, traditional tattoos and riding dirty…
We’re interviewing you today as Nicole but you’re better known as being Burning Angel’s Kylee Kross. How’s that working out? Are you still performing?
Yeah, I’m still doing that stuff. Before I moved here I was down in LA working on a pretty big movie that just came out this week. It’s called Bartenders and it’s like a Coyote Ugly spoof, which is pretty much four crazy trouble-making girls working at a bar, starting problems and drinking lots and having a lot of sex. And I was also working on the last few scenes of my new movie, which is coming out in October. It’s going to be called Crushing on Kylee and it’s my first movie where I got to call the shots and say what I wanted to do.
Do you think you have to be a certain type of person to work in porn?
It’s really cliché, but I started stripping when I was 17 and I continued this up until about two years ago. I guess I’d always been comfortable being naked, and it never crossed my mind. Now it takes a really strong person to do it, because of all the bullshit you have to deal with. Not having relationships… I mean it takes a really special person to date somebody that does what I do.
Are you dating a special person?
Oh yeah…
How does that work out? Do you have more rules now that you’re with him?
No, that’s what’s so amazing about him. He’s the first person I’ve ever been with that lets me make my own decisions. He’s with me because he loves me, and he’s kind of sticking it out to see what happens. I don’t throw anything in his face. We don’t watch it. We don’t talk about it. I don’t run around town going “Hey I’m Kylee, nice to meet you…”I make sure I’m Nicole, and I have a separate life, and this just happens to be what I do for a living.
It must be quite hard to ignore such a big part of your life all the time…
I don’t know. I can’t stand the signings and meet-and-greets, and everybody knowing who you are. That’s not why I continued doing this. I continued doing it because I happened to like it. I might not have been the hottest girl doing this, but for some reason everyone fucking liked me and I was doing better than the girl in front of me or the girl behind me. Girls that look like me say all the time “Oh I was the first alt-porn star. I was the first girl with tattoos.” But they were not. I was one of the first. I opened the door for a lot of girls who wanted to be part of these movies, but weren’t really getting any work. That’s why I do it.
What does Nicole like to do?
Nicole’s a vegan and she likes to rescue animals. She rides a bike like a fucking dude. She hangs out with her boyfriend. She’s really into art. Nicole has dirty fingernails and doesn’t wear dresses and doesn’t wear make up and has bruises and scratches over her legs and works in a bike shop and is kind of like a tomboy, you know?
Tattooed chicks and motorbikes are what people commonly associated together, tattoos and bicycles not so much…
It’s funny because I was on facebook.com and someone had posted a picture of a girl covered in tattoos that was riding a fixed gear bike. It’s weird. I’m pretty deep in the fix scene, and there are not a lot of girls that are as covered in tattoos as me. All the kids that hang around here, none of them have tattoos.
Tell us a bit about your tattoos and how you started collecting…
I’ve been working in tattoo shops since I was 15 years old. My whole family have tattoos. None of them as extreme as I, but it’s always been something that I’ve grown up seeing and I knew really young that I wanted to get tattoos. The first one I got was when my Grandpa took me to this shitty street shop on South Beach in Florida and I got this tribal sun on the back of my neck with my astrological sign in the middle of it. I would never get rid of it in a million years. Then I got the cliché nautical stars on my stomach. Then I started doing this Japanese stuff on my arm, which is my oldest visible tattoo. And then I started going nuts. I was getting tattooed once a month. Working in shops, not getting paid, just getting tattooed.
What kind of shops where you working in?
I worked at this street shop called Fun House for a year. From there I went to Hole Addiction and I apprenticed there to pierce. I pierced there for a year, then I went over to Bruce Bart which is a pretty well-known shop in Florida, pierced there. Then to Atlanta, Salt Lake City, moved to New York and the last tattoo shop I worked in was for Bert Krak. He still owns Top Shelf, and I worked there for almost two years. That was the most amazing experience because some of my favourite tattoos came from there.
Which ones are your favourite?
I have a whole arm covered in stuff by Bert Krak. He did my hands: the old Sailor Jerry flash for sweet and sour babies. He did my birds. I have work by Dave Fox. I went down to Miami Ink and got a piece by Ami James. Eli Quinters is doing my thighs, which are not finished yet. Simon (Edge) has tattooed a Ben Folds tattoo on me – it’s our favourite song. And I love the Burzum tattoo in the inverted cross too. My best tattoos are on my legs because I started those last.
Do think it’s always important to be unique with your tattoo designs or is traditional better?
Personally, I love traditional tattoos because I know they’re going to look just as good 30 years from now. There’s more of a story behind it too. I do have some new school stuff and some neo traditional stuff, but I think if I’d
had known what I know now back then, I would probably have just had them all black and traditional.
In the same way, what rules should people follow when getting tattoos?
For a first tattoo I think it’s better to start somewhere where it’s not visible to make sure you know what you’re going to be doing. I see a lot of people nowadays who have absolutely no tattoos getting their hands done, the sides of their necks…Fuck I was covered before I got my neck tattooed. It’s kind of like a rite of passage. You have to earn it. And these kids are trying to outdo each other. I’m fucking 26 years old. Thank God I have another hobby otherwise what would I do for a living?
Just fucking think about it before you make that decision.
To keep up to date with Kylee, you can read her blog here :
http://laviniacycle666.wordpress.com/
http://twitter.com/kyleekross
