Sex work: it’s not the easiest thing to discuss, but when it comes to storytelling, the subject offers plenty to be explored. While its history is complicated, film and television have often used the subject to explore themes such as loneliness, power, intimacy, and survival.
Comedian Brett Goldstein, whose breakout role in Ted Lasso made him a recognizable face, and then Shrinking, which he co-created, is set to tackle the subject of sex work when he plays a divorced dad who becomes a male escort.
Escorted, which, according to Deadline, Goldstein will star, executive produce, write, and co-showrun, is set to premiere on Amazon with an 8-episode first season. Escorted is being described as a romantic comedy, though if Goldstein’s work on Shrinking is any indication, audiences should probably expect some emotional weight alongside the humor.
“I’m so excited to bring a wholesome show about condoms, co-parenting, and cosplay to Amazon – the place where I actually buy my condoms, so it feels like a real full circle moment,” Goldstein said.
The escort business has had a place in movies for over 100 years, including in 1928 when Janet Gaynor won an Academy Award for her role as a former prostitute in Street Angel.
Almost a century later, at the 2025 Academy Awards, Anora, the story of a sex worker with a shot at a better life, won Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Editing, demonstrating that such films can achieve outstanding critical and commercial success.
Movies aren’t the only place where sex work has a spotlight. In 2009, Hung premiered on HBO. It was about a divorced, middle-aged dad whose financial struggles push him toward an unconventional career. Then, in 2011, Jennifer Love Hewitt starred in The Client List, about a single mom leading a double life as a high-end sex worker at a local day spa.
The sex worker industry lends itself to exploring complicated characters in any number of situations and is written for any genre. Here are 5 films that have stood the test of time and tackle life in the sex work industry.
Pretty Woman (1990)
If there’s one movie about a sex worker that most girls watched between the ages of 10-14, it was probably Pretty Woman – and it’s because their parents allowed it (I know mine did). Pretty Woman is about a corporate hotshot, Edward (Richard Gere), who needs a woman on his arm for a week of business and social events. Vivian (Julia Roberts) agrees to be his escort. Of course, romance ensues, and the film launched Roberts and her acting career into the stratosphere.
Originally, Pretty Woman didn’t have the well-lit, fairy-tale vibe; instead, it was a darker look at the sex worker industry with a far less happy ending. But when Disney got hold of the spec script by J.F.Lawton, and gave it to director Garry Marshall, he turned it into a now classic romantic, fish-out-of-water tale about a young woman who finds her Prince Charming on the streets of Hollywood.
American Gigolo (1980)
Nine years before Richard Gere picked up his own escort, he played Julian Kay in American Gigolo, an LA-based sex worker who caters to wealthy women and ends up being accused of murder. The romantic thriller presents Julian as sophisticated, fashionable, and leading a luxurious lifestyle, while exploring themes of loneliness, status, and social class. But when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder, the glamorous world he inhabits quickly unravels.
Writer/director Paul Schrader was never afraid to explore a dark world. His breakout script, Taxi Driver, was a big hit, and he followed it with Hardcore, which follows a deeply religious father who must venture into the adult film industry to find his missing daughter. What American Gigolo does is look into the sex work industry with respect and how even the most high-end professionals in the business are vulnerable, subject to its transactional nature, and the ease of turning the law against them.
Klute (1971)
When a businessman goes missing, it’s up to detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) to find him. In the process, he meets Bree (Jane Fonda), a high-end call girl and aspiring actress living in New York. He soon discovers that Bree may not only be connected to the missing man but also have captured the eye of a dangerous stalker.
Klute pairs two of the biggest stars of the 1970s (Sutherland and Fonda) and puts them in a movie by soon-to-be iconic director Alan J. Pakula, who would go on to direct All the President’s Men and The Parallax View.
The movie places Bree, a sex worker, at the center of the story while also reflecting the changing attitudes toward women and sexuality in American cinema in the 1970s. Like many “warning signs” in these types of movies, we see the sex worker in vulnerable situations, contending with loneliness, power, exploitation, and the struggle for personal identity; all these themes are prevalent in stories about sex workers.
Tangerine (2015)
Almost a decade before Sean Baker took home several Academy Awards for Anora, he wrote and directed Tangerine, one of the most groundbreaking independent films of the decade. It not only had transgender sex workers at the heart of the story, but it was also shot on an iPhone.
Tangerine is a story about a transgender sex worker in Hollywood, who, after 28 days in jail, searches throughout Hollywood for the man who cheated on her and broke her heart. Transgender characters are rarely portrayed authentically in mainstream movies, but Baker’s casting of transgender actresses Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor in the leading roles provided realism and emotional depth to characters who might otherwise have been reduced to stereotypes.
Tangerine portrays the realities and social vulnerabilities faced by many sex workers, especially transgender women. They aren’t just small characters in a bigger story, but major characters in a movie that makes sex work central to the story, exploring the depths of friendship, survival, and discrimination in an industry often sensationalized.
Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957, Nights of Cabiria may be one of the most beloved films about a sex worker ever made, as stated in an Observer piece on the film, because of its complex and nuanced portrayal of a sex worker, which is seen as courageous for its time.
Directed by Federico Fellini, the film follows Cabiria (Giulietta Masina), a sex worker in Rome who dreams of finding love, stability, and a better life. Roger Ebert considered her performance similar to Chaplin’s Little Tramp, with a touch of Lucille Ball, who must have been on Italian TV in the 1950s. “It’s as if Cabiria thinks she can waltz untouched through the horrors of her world, if she shields herself with a comic persona,” he said.
Cabiria is an emotionally complex, resilient, hopeful, and vulnerable character all at once, and the movie was groundbreaking in challenging audiences to empathize with someone living on the margins of society. Like many films on the subject, Nights of Cabiria explores themes such as economic insecurity, social stigma, dignity, and vulnerability.
Whether it’s the fairy-tale fantasy of Pretty Woman or the emotional realism of Tangerine, stories about sex work continue to resonate in every genre because they reveal complicated people navigating survival, intimacy, and identity. Now, Goldstein’s Escorted will take a look at the subject and likely balance humor, heartbreak, and honesty, as Shrinking and Ted Lasso did.