Porn chic has made the adult film industry more accepted, if not respected, than ever before. Where once the idea of a grot star appearing in a mainstream TV show or movie was unthinkable, now it’s commonplace to see that person who popped up via a “completely accidental” Google search in a film, music video or TV series.
So, as Bree Olsen stars as pretty much the only female character in The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence), we take a moment to salute those stars who downed tools to go straight, either permanently or just as a breather from meat movies.
BREE OLSON
With her nom de porn a mixture of a high school friend’s first name and a spin on the Olsen sisters’ last name, Bree Olson (real name Rachel Marie Oberlin) spent five years in the skin trade from 2006 to 2011.
Aside from porn, Bree was most famous for being one of Charlie Sheen’s “goddesses” during his infamous 2011 public meltdown.
Since her retirement, The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (pictured) is Olson’s most high-profile gig. Although she can also be seen in Camp Massacre, Not Another Celebrity Movie, and her own Kickstarter funded series Bree Does Comedy.
Up next is the Penn Jilette scripted movie, Director’s Cut, but presumably she won’t be method acting for her role as “Sexy Nurse”.
RILEY STEELE
The California pornstar, whose previous outings included Naked Aces 5 and Bad Girls, starred as Crystal opposite Kelly Brook in the horror film Piranha 3D (pictured).
“I thought getting an audition for Piranha 3D was one of the highlights of my life, but when I was offered the part, I almost died,” said Steele. “I’m going to be around all these amazing actors, so I really want to keep up and learn from them.”
After growing up in Escondido, California, jobs included working at Starbucks and at a golf course snack bar before she met porn star Jesse Jane at a signing.
Jane advised her to get into the adult film business and she contacted the porn studio Digital Playground, who signed her to an exclusive contract that same day.
Her first scene was in the 2008 film Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge. She’s currently still working in the adult industry, with Barbarella and The Empire Strikes Back porn parodies both released in 2015.
SASHA GREY
Grey is arguably the most successful actress since Traci Lords to make the leap from fumble films to regular cinema. Rather than bit-parting in movies, she is typically one of the leads, working with Elijah Wood in Open Windows (pictured), Brittany Snow in Would You Rather, and Garret Dillahunt in The Scribbler.
The Californian actress worked as a waitress in steak houses to save the $7,000 to move to LA and embark on a porn career. Her debut film was with the legendary, infamous Rocco Siffredi when she was eighteen.
But, after starring in dozens of adult movies since turning 18, Sasha Grey’s Winona Ryder looks meant it was only a matter of time before the mainstream came calling.
Oscar-winning director Stephen Soderbergh cast Grey as the lead in The Girlfriend Experience, the story of a high-end Manhattan prostitute, after reading her profile in a Los Angeles magazine.
“She’s kind of a new breed, I think. She doesn’t really fit the typical mold of someone who goes into the adult film business. … I’d never heard anybody talk about the business the way that she talked about it,” he said.
An Adult Video News performer of the year, she also appeared in videos for The Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots, before making her straight movie debut in the slasher pic Smash Cut and had a recurring role in HBO’s Entourage.
LEXI BELLE
As of 2015, Belle has had a full decade in the grumble flick industry, carving a niche for herself in porn parodies of TV shows and movies. She essayed Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) in Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, was Ann-Margret in Elvis XXX, and Lana in the Tron spoof, amusingly titled Pron.
But, her most memorable (and perhaps disturbing) parody appearance was as Smurfette in 2012’s This Ain’t The Smurfs XXX (pictured) – a title sorely in need of some punctuation to stop it being so self-contradictory. It marked the first time a grot starlet blue herself (we couldn’t resist).
In 2011 Belle appeared in an episode of Funny or Die as “Party Threesome Girl”, but has gone mainstream legit with her 2015 movie Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance. She is joined in that film by former pornstar Kayden Kross, The Room auteur Tommy Wiseau and actress Bai Ling.
JENNA HAZE
Like Lexi Belle, Jenna Haze has plenty of porn parodies in her arsenal (chiefly three appearances as Bella in Twilight rip-offs), but is now striking out in mainstream movies.
Her adult career spanned 2001 to 2013, and during that time she did her bit to make raunch respectable, appearing as an adult star in both Superbad and Crank 2: High Voltage.
Haze also made the world’s first Blu-movie, with Jenna Haze Oil Orgy being adult entertainment’s first dip into Blu-ray.
It’s a world away from her teenage years when she was the oil changer for a fast food restaurant.
In 2014 Haze appeared in the low budget horror Raised By Wolves, and in 2015 appears in Pocket Listing, also starring Rob Lowe and Burt Reynolds.
TRACI LORDS
The enfant terrible of porn stars, literally as Traci Lords was underage for most of her adult film career. During that time she was arguably the most famous porn star on the planet, and the entire industry was almost brought down when her actual age was discovered.
Posing for Penthouse aged 16, Lords (real name Norma Kuzma) swiftly moved into adult movies – making at least 20 features, although other sources claim nearer one hundred.
Lords made her straight film debut in John Waters’ Cry Baby and has subsequently had modest mainstream success in TV shows and B-Movies. We’ll skip over her music career, save a for a guest spot on the Manic Street Preachers song Little Baby Nothing.
She had a memorable cameo at the beginning of Blade, and sent up her porn past in an episode of Roseanne and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
But, unlike legends Ginger Lynn and Marion Chambers who returned to the adult industry, there is more chance of Lords becoming the next US President than making another bluey. Reasons why are detailed in her 2005 tell-all, Underneath It All.
Steadily working still, her best performance of recent years was as a neurotic mother in the cult 2012 horror film Excision (pictured).
KOBE TAI
At 5ft 3inches Kobe Tai is a porn pixie who sizzled for seven sinful years from 1996 – 2003, and then appeared a few more times in smut cinema titles, including the delightfully named Retaliasian.
Of Taiwanese and Japanese heritage, Kobe, along with fellow decadent diva Asia Carrera, paved the way for Asian actresses such as Kaylani Lei and Tera Patrick to take Tinseltown’s after dark industry by storm in the naughty noughties.
Tai was memorable as the doomed hooker in Very Bad Things (pictured), easily holding her own (in all ways) against character actors Jeremy Piven, John Favreau, and, er, Christian Slater.
She also put the wood into Hollywood spoof Mission: Erotica, co-starring with Asia Carrera in what stands proudly as the Heat of skinflicks.
She now seems to be out of the moving picture industry entirely.
KATIE MORGAN
Katie Morgan- who made her mainstream debut in Zack and Miri Make A Porno (pictured) – first got involved in the flesh film industry to pay off bail and a plea bargain after being caught smuggling 100lbs of marijuana from Mexico into the US.
After making a go of it in Dirty Debutantes 197 she chose the stage name Morgan in honour of the rum and the name Katie after Gone With The Wind character Scarlett O’Hara’s real name.
Off porn sets, she was well-known for her radio appearances and was named Best Unsung Siren by the X-Rated Critics Association.
In Zack and Miri she plays a stripper who is recruited by the pair – played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks – to star in their homemade skinflick. According to IMdb, she has been silent since appearing in the non-porn 2011 movie Life Happens, starring Breaking Bad’s Krysten Ritter.
JENNA JAMESON
Wise beyond her years due to drug addiction, sexual assault and anorexia, Jenna Jameson knew how to commodify herself and became the biggest porn star in town.
Her book “How To Make Love Like A Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale” is a sobering account of how to make it in the flesh flick business, and Jameson went mainstream as a scream queen in such fare as Zombie Strippers (pictured), Sin-Jyn Smith and Horrorween. After a four year absence, her next movie is the non-adult film Limelight, due out in 2015.
ASIA CARRERA
The MENSA member and gifted pianist rebelled against her Japanese and German parents at 17 and began working as a go-go dancer in New Jersey clubs.
After doing a shoot for an adult magazine in 1993, she moved to California and broke into the blue movie industry. Carrera appeared in more than 250 titles and subsequently becoming involved in writing, producing and directing porn.
Although she’s kept her thesping talents largely confined to those movies we call blue, Carrera managed to squeeze in a small role in the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski between shooting Chasin’ Pink and Samurai Pervert 2.
Proving she’s a method actress, for The Big Lebowski Asia’s (uncredited) appearance was as a starlet named Sherry in the hilarious looking spoof grot Logjammin’.
After her husband died in a car crash, leaving her alone and 8 months pregnant, Carrera appealed directly to fans through her website for donations to stop from going broke.
Subsequent battles with booze and having to give her child up for adoption are also tragedies that have befallen Carrera, which she poignantly discusses in the laugh-free 2012 documentary After Porn Ends (pictured).
NINA HARTLEY
Radical feminist Nina Hartley is an outspoken advocate for the porn industry and has been a skinflick mainstay since her debut in 1984.
A registered nurse, Hartley graduated magna cum laude (stop giggling), but reportedly chose porn over nursing because she didn’t want to watch people die – choosing to suffer “the little death” herself instead.
Her role in Boogie Nights (pictured) as William H. Macy’s derisory, nymphomaniac wife was her first mainstream role, but proved she could hold her own against some of Hollywood’s finest character actors.
She has specialised in MILF and instructional movies and now appears to be alternating between blue movies and regular fare. She was Auntie Em in a Wizard of Oz parody (nothing’s sacred) and Frau Undawaren in an Austin Powers spoof. She also appeared in Hard Times, a TV comedy about the porn industry and the Patton Oswalt starring horror-comedy Dude Bro Party Massacre III.
TERA PATRICK
This porn polymath is the love child of many major players who have come before her.
With a microbiology degree and fluent Hungarian under her belt, she has the looks and smarts of Asia Carrera, is a registered nurse like legend Nina Hartley, and with the can-do attitude of dirty movie diva Jenna Jameson, rose from cheap gonzo shorts to a contract star with major porn studio Vivid.
One of “interactive cinema’s” greatest actresses, Patrick entered adult art movies at 23. But, an entrepreneur, she provided expert agony aunt sex advice for FHM magazine, while her mainstream film career initially extended to talking head spots in documentaries – including F*ck, a word with which she is intimately familiar.
She announced her retirement from the adult biz in 2009 and the following year headlined the apparently not very good Indonesian horror film Rintihan Kuntilanak Perawan (pictured). Patrick also penned an autobiography, Sinner Takes All, in 2011 and has since returned to porn, albeit in non-sex roles.
MARILYN CHAMBERS
Marilyn Chambers’ entered the world of blue movies after failing to secure straight acting gigs, and starred in the infamous Mitchell Brothers’ 1972 onanism opus Behind the Green Door.
That Chambers was once the box girl for Ivory soap powder (tagline: 99 and 44/100% pure) made the film a smash hit, particularly due to a then-shocking unsimulated interracial love scene.
Chambers briefly crossed over to the mainstream with the lead role in David Cronenberg’s Rabid (pictured) after first choice Sissy Spacek turned it down. But, she couldn’t escape her past for most of her career and appeared in numerous adults only titles.
At the time of her death she was just beginning to settle into a low-key indie film career. Relatively young at 56, no foul play was suspected in her passing.
GINGER LYNN
The first actress contracted to legendary adult label Vivid (beating out hot favourite Traci Lords), Ginger Lynn used her full name of Ginger Lynn Allen when she embarked upon a mainstream film career.
She peaked early with a major role in indie favourite Bound and Gagged: A Love Story, and in the noughties appeared in B-movies such as American Pie: Band Camp and The Devil’s Rejects.
The call of adult filmmaking proved too strong and she returned to the business from 2007 to 2011, before apparently calling it quits. In 2015 she is due to appear in the low budget horror House of Many Sorrows (pictured), and is reteaming with The Devil’s Rejects director Rob Zombie for 31, due out in 2016.
ROCCO SIFFREDI
The hugely gifted Rocco Siffredi is the mean man of meat movies. Small wonder then that man-hating director Catherine Breillat cast him as the epitome of male sexuality in depress-fest Romance and as a gay man trying to figure out women in the wrist-cutting Anatomy of Hell (pictured).
Matinee idol good-looking this Italian Stallion took his professional name from Alain Delon’s character in Borsalino and in Italy has enjoyed mainstream success in TV commercials.
But, his violent adult movies may put you off sex for life.
RON JEREMY
Beloved by grumble film fans everywhere due to his hairy, squat physique and doughy face only a mother (or well-paid performer) could love, when Ron Jeremy (nickname “The Hedgehog) attempted to enter the adult film biz something was obviously afoot.
Despite holding the Guinness World Record for most blue movies made (1,900+), “the Hedgehog” has also appeared in music videos and TV shows, while quietly working on a straight acting career with ironically small parts in The Boondock Saints and The Rules of Attraction amongst others.
His role in Robert De Niro’s Ronin (directed by frequent Jeremy collaborator John Frankenheimer) was cut at the insistence of the studio.
Now he seems to be doing the odd not-for-nan movie amidst a plethora of modestly budgeted horror comedies, including Haunted Trailer, Werewolves in Heat and Return To Nuke ‘Em High Volume 2, in which he plays God.
The 2001 documentary profile Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (pictured) inspired the title of a certain movie entitled Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. His 2008 autobiography was entitled Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz.
Oct 2020 postscript: It seems Ron Jeremy is the adult industry’s Harvey Weinstein, and unfortunately not just in physical appearance. Jeremy is currently on trial for 23 counts of alleged sexual assault and rape, spanning a 17-year period, with victims aged 15 to 54 years old.
The porn industry has not had a #MeToo response to the allegations against Jeremy. Perhaps because its proto-#MeToo moment in 2015 when performers accused porn star James Deen of physical abuse and rape, accusations that were ultimately met with indifference within the industry. An unapologetic Deen has worked steadily since.
Deen also starred in 2013’s Kickstarter funded Lindsay Lohan disaster The Canyons, scripted by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis and directed Blue Collar and Mishima helmer Paul Schrader. For Lohan, Schrader and Ellis it was a career low point. For Deen, The Canyons was probably as good as he’ll ever get in the mainstream.
We’ll report back when the verdict is reached in Jeremy’s trial.
Rob Daniel
T: @rob_a_daniel
