Belle Knox, whose real name is Miriam Weeks, was born on June 9, 1995 in San Antonio, Texas. Her father Kevin is an Army doctor who served in Afghanistan and her mother Harcharan is from India. Miriam attended Gonzaga Prep School in Spokane, a private Jesuit school where she was named 'Spokane Scholar' because of her master in languages (2013). Knox is half Canadian and half Indian Punjabi, and was raised as a Roman Catholic in Spokane, Washington. She has one brother and one sister. Belle entered the porn industry in 2013 when she was eighteen years old. During this time she was a freshman year on college (she was filming porn during the school breaks). She had a good thought about entering the industry because she feared that it might influence her future life, as well as the life of her family. During this time she was studying at Duke University. The main reason she decided to start filming in the industry was the high college tuition ($60 000). Belle loved that she was able to have her schedule under control and that with time she was able to earn about $1300 per scene. Prior porn she had tried to apply for government loans, but she was rejected and she didn’t want to apply for private student loans because that was a definite way to put her family in debt. Her decision for this big step in her life was not solely for the money, but also because she loved pornography.Belle KnoxHer first scene was with James Deen (she applied on one of his ads where she picks fangirls and later has sex on camera with them). For the alleged shooting Belle earned $700, and stated that she didn’t care about money, but solely for the experience to have intercourse with her favorite male porn star. After that famous scene, she started doing more porn scenes in many different genres such as masturbation, striptease, lesbian, hardcore, teen, group sex, interactive porn, threesome etc. The combination of her stage name comes from the Belle from Beauty and the Beast and the character of Belle from Secret Diary of a Call Girl, while the name "Knox" was inspired from Amanda Knox, who was exonerated in the murder of Meredith Kercher. At the beginning 2016 Belle announced that she was no longer in the industry. Porn career didn’t bring a lot of nice things for Belle. Although she has won Fanny Award in 2014 and XBIZ Award in 2015, she has been through a lot of problems because of her decision to shoot porn scenes. One of her fellow Duke University students saw her in a porn video and recognized her; although Belle confirmed to him that it was her and asked him to keep her secret, the guy showed her videos to his fraternity brothers and soon everyone at Duke University found out about her secret job in the porn industry. Her social networks were flooded with friend requests and followers and Belle realized that everyone already knew about her porn persona. Besides that, she started getting rape, violence and death threats. Duke University was flooded with posters with her face, personal info as well as her porn star alias.Belle has spoken that she felt threatened, scared and that she felt as a victim of “slut shaming”. Her case was huge and there were debates over how the society has double standards – a lot of students were seeking the campus staff to inform her father that Belle was a porn star, while no one asked the campus staff to inform the boy’s mother that he was watching porn. The university didn’t take her cries for help and protection seriously. Belle’s case was adapted to an episode of Law and Order. She took a break from college and continued again this year. At the moment she is studying women’s studies and sociology and wants to become women’s rights activist, and civil rights lawyer. She considers being a sex-positive feminist and libertarian. She is bisexual.