It was to be her breakout moment: a sci-fi blockbuster film, a red-carpet lifestyle, and a new beginning far from her scandalized past. But just as 26-year-old Emily Willis was poised to enter Hollywood’s spotlight, tragedy hit in a heart-stopping, irreversible sequence of events.
RadarOnline.com has verified that Willis, whose birth name is Litzy Lara Banuelos, was on the verge of leaving behind her adult film past and establishing herself as a successful mainstream actress. Instead of mingling with Hollywood’s elite at A-list premieres, however, she now lies in partial paralysis, the purported victim of catastrophic medical abandonment that has permanently disabled and rendered her cognitively unresponsive.
FROM PENTHOUSE TO PREMIERE
Emily Willis worked for years establishing herself as one of the adult industry’s best-known stars. She entered the industry in 2017 and was made a Penthouse Pet in 2019. In 2021, she won Female Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards, the industry equivalent of the Oscars.
By 2023, though, she wanted to rewrite the script.
She gained that chance when she was assigned a starring role in Divinity, a science fiction dystopian thriller film by Eddie Alcazar and produced by Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh. Willis played “Lynx,” an ominous, enigmatic character linked to an ancient, mind-expanding device. Divinity premiered at Sundance and entered theatrical release in the United States on 3 November 2023. The project was a complete shift for Willis from adult to art-house film.
Critics and audiences took notice. It was a risk that had rewarded her in being cast. Willis burned with intensity. For a brief, shining moment, she wasn’t an adult entertainment performer but an actress.
No one could have known of the quiet war under her raucous on-screen personality.
THE DARK TRUTH BEHIND THE SPOTLIGHT
While Divinity was packed into halls nationwide, Willis was already on the edge of collapse. Underneath all the glitz, a nightmare existed. She had become seriously hooked on ketamine and took six grams daily for nearly a year. Court documents stated that the drug had ravaged her body, leading to chronic bladder inflammation, uncontrollable incontinence, and raging night terrors.
Her entourage encouraged her to seek assistance, and in the fall of 2023, she checked herself into Summit Malibu, an upscale California rehab center.
She entered the center, and her family remained straight. Clean urine tests confirmed she had no ketamine in her system upon arrival or during her stay. She was also on prescribed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication at the time.
But rather than finding recovery, Willis found terror.
A COMA, A LAWSUIT, AND A MOTHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE
Only a few days into her hospital stay, Willis’ situation supposedly turned sharply worse. Nurses apparently noted she was unkempt, emaciated, and disoriented, with an anxious demeanor and poor cognitive awareness. No emergency services were requested.
That decision, her relatives claim, proved to be lethal.
In a shocking twist, Willis suffered a cardiac arrest while in care. By the time a nurse did discover her, she had no pulse. Paramedics were called. CPR was given for 30 to 40 torturous minutes before her heart started to beat again. Meanwhile, the damage was irreparable.
She was induced into a medically induced coma for nearly two months and regained consciousness with a catastrophic brain injury. Doctors diagnosed her with anoxic brain damage from prolonged oxygen deprivation to the brain. In early 2024, she was suspected to have locked-in syndrome. In this sporadic neurological disorder, the patient is fully conscious but is unable to move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles.
Willis only weighed 80 pounds when she arrived at the center. Her family insists that her decline was not only evident but also overlooked.
Lawyer James Morris, the Banuelos family’s current representative, sued Summit Malibu and its parent company, Malibu Lighthouse Treatment Centers, for malpractice. According to the lawsuit, Willis’ condition deteriorated over several days, and staff members did not call 911 or take her to the hospital, even with apparent signs of medical distress.
“She is permanently physically disabled,” Morris said in February 2025. “She can move her legs and arms around a bit and make outside noises, but whether or not she has any idea of what’s going on is to be determined.”
“She’s home in Utah, residing with her mother. It’s just a sad, sad case.”
A LEGAL BATTLE BREWING IN SANTA MONICA
The following chapter of this tragic narrative appears on June 18, as the Santa Monica Courthouse hears a demurrer and a motion to strike proposed by the lawyers of Summit Malibu. The drug rehab is attempting to get the case dropped, something that the family believes is an ultimate attempt to avoid paying up.
As the law moves glacially, Emily Willis is frozen in time. A promising life, bright and light, has been suspended. The Sundance sensation, once Hollywood’s celebrity ingénue, now struggles for attention, not at premieres but in court.
The teen who ran away from porn to chase the silver screen has ended up as an icon rather than something much more menacing. An institution that consumed her and, when she cried out for help, possibly sealed her fate.
