After surviving infamy, fallout and the fantasy machine, feature entertainer Brett Rossi steps back in the spotlight — and into your clubs — on her own terms.
By now, you probably think you know feature entertainer Brett Rossi. The headlines, the glam, the curves, her story has been told in paparazzi flashes and TMZ blurbs for over a decade. Online, she’s been sensationalized, dissected, lusted over and spat upon by both bored housewives and horny trolls. But what’s past is prologue.
Today, Rossi is a world away from where she started, though her heels are still planted firmly in the industry that helped make her a star. These days, she’s not popping bottles in velvet-roped VIP lounges unless there’s a paycheck attached. More often, she’s curled up at home in pajamas, watching Forensic Files with her rescue dog, Steve, and her two hairless cats, Mouse and Pinky. Her downtime obsession? Another show, Secrets of the Morgue. Her daylight escape? Trail rides with her horses, Virgil and Willow, or target practice at the gun range.
“People are always surprised to find out I’m actually kind of wholesome,” she says with a grin. “Like, do I secretly fit the profile of a serial killer? Maybe! But I’m still me. I’m just not going 100 miles an hour anymore.”
It’s that effortless irony and unexpected softness that keeps Rossi magnetic; a woman who’s lived hard, learned fast, and now prefers her thrills fictional, her nights quiet and her company… dead. (On TV, of course.)
But when the lights hit the stage? She’s still the All-American showstopper, built to thrill, impossible to forget.
The rise of Rossi
Born in the dusty sprawl of Fontana, California, deep in the Inland Empire, Rossi wanted to perform since Front Street.
“I went to a performing arts high school. Ballet, theater, gymnastics, I did it all,” she says. “Couldn’t sing for shit, but I wanted the lead anyway.”
Even as a kid, Rossi was a showgirl in embryo: part ambition, part sparkle, part rebellion. She’d tape up her dance shoes, paint her face in glitter and take the stage like she was auditioning for life itself. That sense of performance, of controlling a room, if you will, never left her.
Long before she became a name in the adult industry, Rossi was chasing a different dream: the spotlight of Hollywood. Entertainment ran in her blood. Her grandmother worked with Lucille Ball, her aunts were Pepsi and Lamborghini models. The women in her family were unapologetically glamorous, confident, camera-ready, never shrinking. Rossi soaked it in.
But it wasn’t until the Playboy boom of the mid-2000s that things really got interesting.
Back in 2007, when Hugh Hefner was still king of Holmby Hills and MapQuest was the poor man’s GPS, 18-year-old Brett got into her chipped blue ’84 Honda Accord and drove to the Playboy Mansion, without an invite.
“I literally wasn’t on the list,” she laughs. “I just grouped myself in with these other hot girls at the gate.”
Somehow, it worked. And since Rossi fit the profile — blonde, bold and California-bred — the man in charge took a shine to her.
“I wasn’t one of his girlfriends,” she says bluntly. “Very nice man, but not my type. Still, without those bookings, I wouldn’t have made rent. He really took care of a lot of girls.”
If sneaking into the Playboy Mansion was the spark, Penthouse was the gasoline.
“Penthouse finds me, whatever,” Rossi shrugs. “I go and I shoot my shit.”
That “shit” turned her into a Penthouse Pet selection: the glossy, high-glam centerfold girl with big hair, big eyes, and the kind of face that could sell perfume or sin. It was her first taste of national fame; the first time she saw her image plastered larger than life on magazine racks.
By the time her Penthouse contract was winding down, she had serious money in the bank and a new mentor in her corner: Devon, the Digital Playground icon Rossi had worshiped as a teen.
“I’d never stepped foot in a strip club — never,” she says. “Devon’s like, ‘Girl, you’re not doing anything between shoots. You need to feature dance.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know pole or anything.’ She’s like, ‘Who cares? This is costumes, this is themes. You’re already a dancer.’”
In 2010, Rossi landed her first feature gig in Myrtle Beach at Masters. She still remembers walking into the club, fresh off a plane, realizing she was about to step onstage in front of a crowd for the first time.
“I thought, I cannot fuck this up,” she says. “Luckily I didn’t and I’ve enjoyed featuring at clubs ever since.”
Fake it until you make it
Devon, an OG contract girl and veteran feature, didn’t sugarcoat a thing. “She was like, ‘You are not a porn star in panties. You are the feature. You are the main event. Act like it.’” That lesson stuck.
So there Rossi was, still figuring out how to move from centerfold to feature, when she met her first house mom.
“I didn’t even know what a house mom was,” she laughs. “This older lady starts asking me questions, and I just break. I tell her I’m terrified. Not of the stage; I was born on a stage. I was scared I wouldn’t be sexy enough.”
The house mom didn’t flinch.
“She looks at me and says, ‘I got two things for you. First: fake it till you make it,” Rossi recalls. “Second: don’t ever let anyone know you’re scared.’”
Then she gave Brett a deal: for $100, she’d make her a custom costume by the next day.
“I didn’t even have $100 on me,” Rossi says.
“She goes, ‘You’ll make it tonight.’”
She did. And the next day, the woman handed her a masterpiece: a glittering electric-blue sequin bra that popped open in front, matching panties, and a mermaid-style skirt with a dramatic train and thigh-high slit.
“It was the most beautiful costume I’d ever seen,” Rossi says. “I still have it. That costume became my blueprint.”
In the beginning, it was all a hustle, modeling gigs here, dance bookings there, driving herself from set to stage in rental cars and motels that smelled like smoke.
“I’m 36 now. I can’t be on the road every weekend,” she says. “And I’m not a showgirl; those girls are stretching on Wednesdays and drinking protein shakes like it’s their religion. That’s not me. Never was.”
Meeting Carlos
Between feature gigs and movies, Rossi was doing well in the prime of her career. In fact, she made enough to step back to imagine a different future for herself. She’d enrolled in nursing school, chasing stability after a decade of cameras and travel. And then came the name that would blow her private world wide open: Carlos Irwin Estévez, aka, Charlie Sheen.
“I didn’t even really know who he was,” she says now. “He wasn’t my era of celebrity. People warned me about his reputation — the addiction, the partying, the ride, basically — but I wasn’t interested.”
Then came the offer: $10,000 to show up at a barbecue. Nothing more. Just eat brisket and mingle.
“I’ll take the money, show up, leave,” she shrugs. “When I got there, it was weird. Other porn girls were there. A TMZ guy was there. It felt like a circus. I’m thinking, what am I doing here?”
And then Sheen walked in. Contrary to every tabloid headline, they didn’t have sex. The only thing they exchanged at the time were pleasantries and decent conversation. She took her money, left and went back to nursing school.
But then he called.
“He sounded nervous,” she says. “He said everyone loved me, that he wanted to see me again. We’d had this deep conversation at the party. For the first time in years, somebody didn’t see me as Brett Rossi, and I didn’t see him as Charlie Sheen. It was… disarming.”
What started as casual hangouts turned into something more.
“He invited me to set,” she recalls. “He told me to bring my mom if I didn’t feel safe. So I did. He was sweet to my mom. He was down to earth. And then he invited me to Cabo.”
Rossi laid it out: “I said, ‘Look, I don’t do drugs. I don’t do multiple girlfriends. That’s not my lifestyle.’ And he said, ‘I’ll quit. I’ll change my life for you.’ I thought he was insane.”
But in Mexico, he proved it.
“That’s when the paparazzi got those balcony photos of him on one knee holding my hand while I’m smoking a cigarette,” she recalls. “Everyone thought he was proposing. He wasn’t. He was telling me he loved me.”
They got serious. They got engaged. And three weeks before the wedding, it all imploded.
Her tabloid fame almost immediately turned toxic. What had been a love story became a witch hunt, with Rossi being written as the villain in the public’s imagination. Fact is, when you’re a woman, and you’re in the adult industry, and you dare to love someone messy, the world can treat you as a disposable commodity.
“That’s the level of dirty this game gets,” Rossi says without bitterness. “I’m not talking about being in ‘adult,’ that’s honest work. I’m talking about fame-adjacent venom, the type that hides behind bottle service and backroom deals, clicks and commissions, all riding off your trauma with zero shame. (Some) promoters weren’t throwing me gigs, they were setting traps, baiting me with bottle girls and bullshit for a photo op they could sell for $5K and a handshake.”
Brett back at it
Sixteen years deep, and the game doesn’t just look different, it looks scorched. The pole still spins, sure. The dollars still fall. But the empire? Shaken.
Ask Rossi what changed, and she doesn’t miss a beat.
“OnlyFans,” she says, like she’s spitting glass.
“I remember Dave [Michaels, of A-List Features] calling me in 2021, sounding like the building was on fire,” she says, curling a smile. “‘Please come back. Nobody wants to dance. They’re all making money at home. What am I gonna do?’”
She could’ve laughed. Could’ve declined. But Rossi doesn’t do petty. She does power.
“I told him, ‘Okay. I’ll come back. But this is a new era. And I’ve got new prerequisites.’”
Not because she’s greedy but because she’s awake. She knows the math. She knows the draw. She knows exactly what her name on the flyer does to a Friday night.
And she still loves the stage.
In an industry that burns bright and fast, Brett Rossi has learned how to glow at her own pace. She’s not chasing chaos anymore, she’s choosing control.
Once, she was the ingénue sneaking through the Playboy gates. Now, she’s the woman who owns her spotlight, who knows when to step into it and when to step away.
And maybe that’s the real story. Not the scandals, not the headlines, but the quiet in-between: a woman who’s been everybody’s fantasy and still found a way to be her own.
“I want to work. I want longevity; I still love what I do and the business of feature dancing,” she says. “This is about partnerships with clubs and the friendships I’ve made by being a feature entertainer. It’s about showing up, showing out and making sure they remember you when the lights go down.”
For more information, visit brettrossi.com. To book Brett please contact Dave Michaels at A-List Features (alistfeatures.com; 727-367-1002) or Frank Bane at Continental Theatrical Agency (continentalagency.com; 727-363-7100).
