Sheen troubles spotlight area resident Rachel Oberlin (a.k.a. Bree Olson) career
Thomas Smith
Last updated: March 13, 2011 11:38 a.m.
Sheen troubles spotlight area resident Rachel Oberlin’s career
Steve Penhollow | The Journal Gazette
Five years ago, Rachel Oberlin was an IPFW student and telemarketer
who knew so little about the adult film industry that she thought
there must be an application she could fill out to get a job in the
business.
As it turned out, there was.
Now, Oberlin, aka Bree Olson, is one of the country’s top adult film
stars and one of Charlie Sheen’s top two “goddesses” (the other being
nanny Natalie Kenly).
And due in part to Sheen, those in northeast Indiana (not to mention,
most of the rest of the world) now know that Oberlin grew up in
Woodburn and still maintains a residence in Fort Wayne.
Oberlin, 24, has gone from country girl to porn star to Sheen-anointed
“goddess,” and yet none of the stereotypes suggested by those labels
holds true when one talks with the woman herself.
In an interview last week, Oberlin seemed amiable, sincere, funny and
self-confident, not damaged, cynical and chaotic.
The country girl seems to still be much in evidence. If it’s all an
act, it is a persuasive one.
Oberlin said she moved to Fort Wayne from Texas with her mother in the
late ’80s when she was 2 years old.
They lived with Oberlin’s grandparents until Oberlin’s mother bought a
house in Woodburn with Oberlin’s stepfather.
“He legally adopted me,” she said.
Oberlin’s parents declined to be interviewed for this article.
Her first summer job was working as a corn detasseler, she said.
Detasseling involves removing the pollen-producing flowers from the
tops of corn plants.
“I got up at like 4 o’clock every morning,” she said. “And it’s all
soaking wet from the dew. We’d have to wear long sleeves – everything
– long pants. Because the corn is … like, it’s sharp, so it’ll give
you these minuscule cuts all over. So we had to be completely covered.
We’d be soaked from this; … and then like, so I am like 90 pounds, and
I’d have 20 pounds’ worth of soaking-wet clothes on.
“And then by the middle of the day, it’s like 100 degrees out and I am
drenched again from sweat,” Oberlin said. “And then I’d get off at
like 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and I remember one time, … I was
walking through the yards, and … I just went in my neighbor’s pool.
“Then I was really soaking wet, and I came in the house and my dad was
like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘I had a long day.’ ”
In Woodburn last week, reaction to Oberlin’s prominence in the media
was subdued.
The tiny town of roughly 1,500, surrounded on all sides by fallow
fields awaiting spring planting, has many crossroads that look like
the place where Tom Hanks restarted his life in the final scenes of
“Cast Away” and where Delta bluesman Robert Johnson sold his away in
his most famous song.
At a bar called The Getaway, a woman identifying herself as the owner
said Oberlin was not a topic of conversation among her customers.
“I don’t think it’s that big a deal here,” she said.
She then added, with a laugh: “I have never seen her in here, although
if you want to say she comes in here every Tuesday and Thursday and
that we have good drink specials, feel free.”
At Bob’s Restaurant, famous for its pies, owner Tiara Bremer said
Oberlin had worked there as a busperson in her midteens.
“It was eight years ago, I think,” she said. “She was a cute girl and
friendly. But she kept to herself. She didn’t discuss her home life.
She didn’t talk about herself much.
“Several of my male customers would ask how old she was, and when I
told them, they’d say ‘Ohhhhhhh … ’ ” she recalled.
“It’s sad,” Bremer said, referring to one or more aspects of Oberlin’s
current life that she did not specify. “I wouldn’t want it to happen
to my girl.”
What Oberlin, a vegan recently honored by PETA, recalls most about
Bob’s is a menu item.
“I loved those chicken tenders,” she said.
After high school, Oberlin said she enrolled at IPFW intending to
become a doctor. But she said she had always been curious about the
adult entertainment industry from listening to “The Howard Stern Show”
on the radio.
At 19, Oberlin said, she “just got on the computer and I was like, ‘I
just want to go out and make movies.’ Well, I had no idea how to do
it. I was like, ‘Is there an application for this? I don’t even know.’
So I just typed in the words ‘porn application’ and this website came
up.”
Oberlin said she posted a photo and a phone number on the site and
received a call at her telemarketing job not long after.
“I’ve got my homework out, and I am trying to work at the same time,”
she said, “And then I get this call from this chick and she was like,
‘Hey, girl, come out to L.A.’ I remember looking at my calendar. I’m
like, ‘Tomorrow’s Wednesday. I can’t go. I have school, I have tests
coming up. I’ve got to finish the workweek.’ And she’s like, ‘You
don’t need any of that any more. Just come out.’ ”
When she first started appearing in pornographic films in California,
Oberlin said she initially tried to stay in school in Indiana as well.
“But then my grades started to slip and so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll put
school on the back burner.’
“So I dropped out and told myself I was going to go back. And my
career just kept escalating, and I just kept making more and more
money and becoming a bigger and bigger star.”
Oberlin said she came up with the name “Bree Olson” by combining the
first name of a high school friend with the last name of the famous
twins who once starred in “Full House.”
In 2010, Maxim magazine named Oberlin “one of the 12 top female stars
in porn.”
It is often assumed that actresses in pornographic films are
psychologically damaged in some way – victims, perhaps, of childhood
trauma or abuse.
The claim may be true of others, Oberlin said, but it is not true for
her.
“I haven’t come away with any friends from the industry,” she said.
“That’s one of the reasons that I stay here in Indiana. I like to keep
the separation between the two and come back here because I like to
think of myself as … you know, normal.”
The last word was delivered almost sheepishly.
Oberlin initially tried to keep her career in X-rated films a secret
from her family, she said. But she quickly grew too well-known for
such a strategy to work, she said.
Oberlin said her family and friends were accepting of her choices
until Sheen began to wage his war with CBS.
“I can’t believe there was such a different reaction. I am, like,
‘Really guys?’ But now I realize that it was because the way the media
made it.”
Oberlin said she initially met Sheen through mutual friends.
“Charlie and I were really under the radar for a long time,” she said.
“He’d come here to Fort Wayne and everything, and nobody even knew.
Now it’s all over. But, hey, I did my part. I never opened my mouth.
Someone else did the talking. I can’t control what other people do. I
held up my end of the bargain.”
Asked for her assessment of Sheen’s mental state, Oberlin mulled it
over for a while and then replied, “I can’t really answer that
question.”
But she said the media reaction to Sheen’s colorful comments has been
overblown.
“People don’t realize that so many things he says are just a joke,”
she said. “When I hear his stuff, I just laugh. But other people, if
they don’t know his humor, take it seriously.”
Oberlin said she has been insulted by media insinuations that she
should not be allowed to associate with Sheen’s children.
“I mean, I don’t know if they realize how many porn actors and
actresses have children of their own,” she said. “Just because we have
sex on camera doesn’t mean we’re pedophiles or something. That’s so
ludicrous for them to assume that.”
Whatever lifestyle Sheen espouses or has pursued, Oberlin said people
should not assume that she embraces it as well.
“As far as me being a partyer,” she said, “regardless to anything
people have seen in the news or regardless to any current events that
may have happened, I am not a partyer by any means.
“If I was, I would have packed my bags and moved to L.A. a long time
ago. I wouldn’t have a stable lifestyle to where I am able to maintain
and build a house in Indiana, and I wouldn’t be able to have the same
friends that I have had since high school. …”
“I am not leading this crazy, drug-filled party life that everyone
thinks I am,” Oberlin said.
Oberlin was in town last week to appear in court in connection with an
arrest on Feb. 3.
According to a police report, Oberlin crashed a black Lexus into a
city light pole near Swinney Park about 11:15 p.m. She was
subsequently charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
On Tuesday, Oberlin and her attorney, Randy Fisher, requested a jury
trial, and one was set for June. Oberlin remains free on $750 bail.
Fisher said a lot of what really happened the night of Oberlin’s
traffic accident, especially an account from the police report that
described Oberlin’s apparent attempt to urinate on an emergency room
floor, has been mischaracterized in the media.
“Again, that’s all been sensationalized,” he said, “because it sounds
funny or ridiculous or plays into this … ”
“But I did not pee myself,” Oberlin insisted. “Or on the floor.”
Turner Watson, a DJ at WBYR-FM 98.9 The Bear who has had Oberlin as a
guest on his show several times, said Oberlin and Bree Olson are two
different people.
“She just knew her place in the universe,” he said. “Which is what
makes this thing right now seem so bizarre.
“She seemed like she had better sense than that.”
Watson said Oberlin is a canny businesswoman who “knows what’s going
on and plays to the audience.”
“Maybe she’s riding this,” he said. “Riding this train until it pulls
into the station.”
That station may be in sight.
Sheen has characterized Oberlin as retired from the porn industry.
Asked whether this is true, Oberlin replies: “As long as I’m with
Charlie. But be sure you put that in there though. ‘As long as I’m
with Charlie, I am retired.’ ”
Oberlin doesn’t anticipate being in the adult film industry for more
than two additional years.
She said she hates Los Angeles.
“There’s nothing special about it. The only thing is, that’s where the
money is. I wish it was here in Fort Wayne. That would be great.”
After her career in the adult film industry is over, Oberlin said she
might return permanently to Fort Wayne, or move to a place that is
equally uncomplicated, and transfer her entrepreneurial attentions to
the Internet.
“My website, that’s something I still might do,” she said. “Just
because that means I can do my own thing. Or if I were to get married,
it’s something I can do with my husband.”
Oberlin said she doesn’t want to get rich, necessarily. She just wants
to be comfortable.
“I want to be able to support a lifestyle that I have obviously become
accustomed to now,” she said.
A question about what kind of man she might like to marry someday
produced a giggle-filled reaction for Oberlin that can only be
described as girlish.
“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “I have always pictured like a wholesome
Midwestern guy. Just like a
college-football-player-who-has-graduated-and-has-a-degree kind of
guy. I don’t know. Just something like that. Just a nice guy.”
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