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Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie
Massoli on April 9, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and former
pornographic actress, who has been called the world's most famous porn
star and "The Queen of Porn." She started acting in erotic films in 1993
after having worked as a stripper and glamor model. By 1996, she had won
the 'top newcomer' award from each of the three major pornographic film
industry organizations. She has since won more than 20 adult film awards,
and has been inducted into both the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO)
and Adult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame.
Jameson founded pornographic entertainment company ClubJenna in 2000 with
Jay Grdina, whom she later married and divorced. Initially a single
website, this business expanded into managing similar websites of other
stars and began producing pornographic films in 2001. The first such film,
Briana Loves Jenna (with Briana Banks), was named at the 2003 AVN Awards
as the best-selling and best-renting pornographic title for 2002. By 2005,
Club Jenna had revenues of US$30 million with profits estimated at half
that. Advertisements for her site and films, often bearing her picture,
have towered on a forty-eight-foot-tall billboard in New York City's Times
Square. Playboy TV hosts her Jenna's American Sex Star reality show where
aspiring porn stars compete for a Club Jenna contract.
Jameson has also crossed-over into mainstream pop-culture, starting with a
minor role in Howard Stern's 1997 film Private Parts. Her mainstream
appearances continued with: regular appearances on The Howard Stern Show;
guest-hosting stints on E! television's Wild On! and Talk Soup programs; a
guest-starring voice-over role in a 2001 episode of the Fox animated
television sitcom Family Guy; an award-winning voice-over role in the 2002
video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; and, a guest-starring role in two
episodes of the 2003 NBC television series Mister Sterling. Her 2004
autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, spent
six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. She has also created a
horror comic book with Virgin Comics entitled Jenna Jameson's Shadow
Hunter, which was released in February 2008. She played the female lead
character in the 2008 horror-comedy Zombie Strippers.
Jameson was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her father is Lawrence Massoli, an
Italian American police officer and program director for KVBC-TV. Her
mother was Judith Brooke Hunt Massoli, a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in
the Folies Bergère show at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. Her mother died
of skin cancer on February 20, 1976, before her daughter's second
birthday. The cancer treatments bankrupted the family and they moved
several times, including living in a trailer and moving in with her
father's mother. Her father spent most of his time at work at the Las
Vegas Sheriff's Department, and she became very close to her brother,
Tony. She was a frequent entrant in beauty pageants as a child, and took
ballet classes. In a featurette on the Zombie Strippers DVD, Jameson
indicates she trained in dance for 15 years.
Jameson writes in her autobiography that in October 1990, while the family
was living on a cattle ranch in Fromberg, Montana, she was beaten with
rocks and gang raped by four boys after a football game. While still 16
she says she was raped a second time, by Preacher, her boyfriend Jack's
biker uncle. (Preacher has denied this.) Rather than tell her father, she
left home and moved in with Jack in her first serious relationship.
Jack was a tattoo artist, and gave her the first of a series of tattoos,
one of which would become her trademark tattoo, two hearts on her right
buttock. According to E!, her brother Tony, who later owned a tattoo
parlor himself, added the inscription "Heart Breaker."
She tried to follow in her mother's career as a Las Vegas showgirl, but
most shows rejected her for not having the then-typical height of 5 feet 8
inches (173 cm). She was hired at Disneyland Resort, but left after two
months stating that the schedule was gleeful, and the money was too good
to be true.
Her boyfriend Jack encouraged her to apply for jobs as a dancer, and in
1991, though underage, she began dancing in Las Vegas strip club strip
clubs using a fake identification. After she was rejected from the Crazy
Horse Too strip club because of the braces on her teeth, she removed them
with pliers and was accepted. After six months, she was earning US$2,000
per night, before finishing high school.
Her first stage name as a dancer was "Jennasis", which she later used as
the name of a business that she incorporated ("Jennasis Killing Co."). She
chose the name "Jenna Jameson" to use as a model after scrolling through
the phone book for a last name that matched her first name, before finally
deciding on Jameson for whiskey, which she is known to drink.
Besides dancing, starting later in 1991, she posed for nude photographs
for photographer Suze Randall in Los Angeles, with the intention of
getting into Penthouse. After her photos had appeared in several men's
magazines under various names, she then stopped working for Randall,
feeling Randall was "a shark" who had been taking advantage of her.
While in high school, she began taking drugs—cocaine, LSD, and
methamphetamine—accompanied by her brother (who was addicted to heroin)
and at times her father. Her addiction worsened during her four years with
her boyfriend. She eventually stopped eating properly and became too thin
to model; Jack left her in 1994. She weighed 76 pounds (less than 35
kilograms) when a friend put her in a wheelchair and sent her to her
father, who was then living in Redding, California, in order to detox; her
father did not recognize her when she got off the plane.
Jameson says that she started acting in pornographic films to get back at
her boyfriend, Jack, for cheating on her. She first appeared in an erotic
film in 1993, a non-explicit softcore movie by Andrew Blake, with
girlfriend Nikki Tyler, whom she had met modeling for Suze Randall. Her
first pornographic movie scenes were filmed by Randy West and appeared in
1994's Up and Cummers 10 and Up and Cummers 11. She quickly achieved
notice and appeared in several other pornographic films while still living
in Las Vegas.
Jameson got her first breast implants on July 28, 1994, to enhance her
stripping and movie careers. By 2004, she had had two different sets of
breast implants and a chin implant.
Jameson's first pornographic film appearances were lesbian scenes (a
common way that female performers ease into the business). She says:
"Girl-on-girl was easy and natural. Then they offered me lots of money to
do boy-girl." Her first heterosexual scene was in Up and Cummers 11
(1994). At the beginning of her career, she promised herself that she
would never do anal sex or double penetration scenes on film. She has also
never done any interracial sex scenes with men (despite that category's
runaway popularity during 2000s). When asked about this on The Howard
Stern Show on February 8, 2008, she said that she wasn't necessarily
opposed to doing so; rather, "it never really came up", as there were few
black men working in porn when she started, and none of them worked
[exclusively] for the same company [as] she did. Instead, her "signature
move" was oral sex, lubricated with saliva.
In 1994, after overcoming her drug addiction by spending several weeks
with her father and grandmother, Jameson relocated to Los Angeles to live
with Nikki Tyler. She started modeling again, and in 1995 got her father's
blessing to make a career out of pornographic films. Her first movie after
that was Silk Stockings. Later in 1995, Wicked Pictures, a then small
pornographic film production company, signed her to an exclusive contract.
She remembers telling Wicked Pictures founder Steve Orenstein:
“ The most important thing to me right now is to become the biggest star
the industry has ever seen. ”
The contract earned Jameson US$6,000 for each of eight movies in her first
year. Her first big-budget production was Blue Movie (1995), where she
played a reporter investigating a porn set; It won multiple AVN Awards. In
1996, Jameson won top awards from three major industry organizations, the
XRCO Best New Starlet award, the AVN Best New Starlet Award, and the Fans
of X-Rated Entertainment (FOXE) Video Vixen award. She was the first
entertainer to win all three awards. A stream of other awards followed.
By 2001, Jameson earned $60,000 for a day and a half of filming a single
DVD, and $8,000 per night dancing at strip clubs. She tried to restrict
herself to five films per year and two weeks of dancing per month. Her
husband Jay Grdina has said that she earned as much as $25,000 per night
dancing.
Since November 2005, she has been the host of Playboy TV's Jenna's
American Sex Star, where prospective porn stars compete in sexual
performances for a contract with her company, ClubJenna. Winners of the
contracts for the first two years were Brea Bennett and Roxy Jezel.
In August 2007, Jameson had her breast implants removed, reducing her from
a D to a C cup; she also said she was finished with appearing on camera in
pornographic films, though she would continue running ClubJenna, which was
grossing $30 million per year. In January 2008, Jameson confirmed she is
retiring from pornographic performances.
Jameson's autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary
Tale was published August 17, 2004. It was co-written with Neil Strauss, a
contributor to The New York Times and Rolling Stone, and published by
ReganBooks, a division of HarperCollins. It was an instant bestseller,
spending six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. The
autobiography also won the 2004 "Mainstream's Adult Media Favorite" XRCO
award in a tie with Seymore Butts's Family Business TV series. It was
translated into German as Pornostar. Die Autobiographie in November 2005,
and Spanish as Como Hacer El Amor Igual Que Una Estrella Del Porno in
January 2006.
The book covers her early career from her beginning in show business
living with her tattoo artist boyfriend, through receiving the
Pornographic Hot d'Or award at Cannes, and wedding pictures from her
second marriage. It does not omit sordid details, describing her two
rapes, drug addictions, an unhappy first marriage, and numerous affairs
with men and women. The first-person narrative is broken up by personal
photos, childhood diary entries, family interviews, movie scripts, and
comic panels.
The autobiography publisher, Judith Regan, also served as executive
producer of a tie-in television news special, Jenna Jameson's Confessions,
airing on VH1 on August 16, 2004, one day before the book's launch. In
April 2005, ReganBooks and Jameson filed lawsuits against each other. The
point of contention was a proposed reality show about Jameson's everyday
life, discussed between her then-husband, Jay Grdina, and the A&E Network.
ReganBooks maintained that any A&E deal was a breach of Jameson's
contract, which indicated that ReganBooks had a stake in the profits
generated by both the special based on her memoir and a reality-based
series, as well as "any similar projects." Jameson's suit claimed that the
A&E deal preceded the ReganBooks contract. The reality series had still
not materialized, and the lawsuit was still being discussed, when
HarperCollins fired Judith Regan on December 15, 2006, over an unrelated
issue.
In January 2007, Jameson was reported in talks with producers on turning
the autobiography into a movie. In March 2007, Jameson was reportedly
missing meetings with producers, thus endangering the movie, due to
problems with a recent vaginoplasty.
Jameson and Grdina formed ClubJenna as an Internet pornography company in
2000. ClubJenna.com was one of the first pornographic sites to provide
more than pictures and videos; it provided explicit diaries, relationship
advice, and even stock tips to paid members. The site reportedly was
profitable in its third week. The business later diversified into
multimedia pornographic entertainment, first by administering other porn
stars' websites, then, in 2001, by production of pornographic films.
Early Club Jenna films starred Jameson herself, limiting herself to
on-screen sex with other women or with Grdina, who appeared as Justin
Sterling. The first ClubJenna film, Briana Loves Jenna (2001), co-produced
with Vivid, cost US$280,000 to make, and grossed over $1 million in its
first year. It was the best selling and best renting pornographic title of
its year, winning twin AVN Awards. It was marketed as "Jenna. Her first
boy/girl scene in over 2 years." referring to Jameson's abstention from
heterosexual on-film intercourse. Grdina has said that Jameson's films
averaged sales of 100,000 copies, compared with run-of-the-mill
pornographic films, which did well to sell 5,000. On the other hand, he
also said that their films took up to twelve days to film, compared with
one day for other pornographic films.
In a January, 2009 interview with William Shatner on Shatner's Raw Nerve,
Jameson said she came close to buying Penthouse magazine when publisher
Bob Guccione filed for Chapter 11 reorganization of his business (which
occurred in August, 2003), but was thwarted when someone else swooped in
and bought up all the stock. New York Magazine's Intelligencer quoted a
source from Penthouse as saying "I’m sure she is considering it", adding
that Jameson was to be cover girl in January, 2004 – and "it’s a really
wild-looking shoot, even for a porn star."
In 2004, the Club Jenna films expanded to starring other actresses without
Jameson – Krystal Steal, Jesse Capelli, McKenzie Lee, Ashton Moore and
Sophia Rossi – as Jameson stepped back from starring roles. In 2005,
Jameson directed her first film, The Provocateur, released as Jenna's
Provocateur in September 2006. The films were distributed and marketed by
Vivid Entertainment, which Forbes magazine once called "the world's
largest adult film company." They made up a third of ClubJenna's revenues,
but over half of the profits.
Club Jenna was run as a family business, with Grdina's sister, Kris, as
Vice President in charge of merchandising. In 2005, Club Jenna had
estimated revenues of $30 million, with profits of about half that.
Jameson also capitalized on merchandising herself. Since May 2003, she has
been appearing on a 48-foot (15 m) tall billboard in New York City's Times
Square promoting her web site and movies. The first advertisement
displayed her wearing only a thong and read "Who Says They Cleaned Up
Times Square?" There is a line of sex toys licensed to Doc Johnson, and an
"anatomically correct" Jenna Jameson action figure. She stars in her own
sex simulation video game, Virtually Jenna, in which the goal is to bring
a 3D model of her to orgasm. Jackson Guitars made a limited series of King
V guitars with Jameson's likeness. Y-Tell, ClubJenna's wireless company,
sells Jenna Jameson "moan tones" (telephone ringtones), chat services, and
games in partnerships with 20 carriers around the world, mostly in Europe
and South America. In 2006, New York City-based Wicked Cow Entertainment
started to expand her brand to barware, perfume, handbags, lingerie, and
footwear, sold through high end retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue and
Colette boutiques. Her prominent merchandising and mainstream media
coverage has been criticized as "obscene" by Morality in Media.
In August 2005, Club Jenna launched Club Thrust, an interactive website
for Jameson's gay male fans, which includes videos, galleries, sex advice,
gossip, and downloads. The director of webmaster relations for Club Jenna
said the straight site had always had a lot of gay traffic. By 2006, Club
Jenna administered more than 150 official sites for other adult
entertainment industry stars.
In August 2005, a group of business investors that included Jameson
purchased Babes Cabaret, a strip club in Scottsdale, Arizona, intending to
make it the first foray of ClubJenna into live entertainment. Soon after
the purchase attracted attention, the Scottsdale City Council proposed a
new ordinance banning nudity at adult-entertainment venues and requiring a
four-foot divider restricting contact with dancers. Such a divider would
have also effectively banned lap dances, the dancers' main source of
revenue. Jameson argued strongly against the ordinance, and helped
organize a petition against it. On September 12, 2006, in a referendum on
the ordinance, voters struck down the stricter rules, allowing the club to
continue to operate as before.
On February 3, 2006, Jameson hosted a "Vivid ClubJenna Super Bowl Party"
with several other Club Jenna and Vivid Girls at the Zoo Club in Detroit,
Michigan for a $500 to $1,000 ticket price. It featured a lingerie show,
but no planned nudity or sex acts. When first announced, the party caused
controversy with the National Football League, which did not sanction this
as an official Super Bowl event. For 2007, Jameson signed up to play
quarterback in the Lingerie Bowl, but retired due to her insurance
company's damage concerns. She instead acted as commentator.
On June 22, 2006, Playboy Enterprises Inc. announced that it had bought
ClubJenna Inc., along with an agreement to have both Jameson and Grdina
stay on as contracted executives. Playboy CEO Christie Hefner said that
she expected to rapidly ramp up film production, producing about 30
features in the first year, and will expand the way they are sold, not
only as DVDs but through TV channels, video-on-demand services and mobile
phones. On November 1, 2006, Playboy renamed one of the Spice Network's
pay-per-view channels from The Hot Network to ClubJenna.
In April 2007, Tera Patrick and her production company Teravision filed a
lawsuit against Jameson and Playboy Enterprises for failing to properly
account for and pay royalties on revenue earned by Patrick's website,
clubtera.com.
Jameson is also known for achieving a level of celebrity outside of
pornography greater than any porn star before her – even bringing
pornography itself closer to mainstream society's awareness and
acceptance. She has said: "I've always embraced my hard-core roots, but
becoming a household name was an important thing to me."
In 1995, Jameson sent photos of herself to radio host Howard Stern. She
became a regular guest on his show, appearing more than 30 times, and
played the role of "Mandy", the "First Nude Woman on Radio", in Stern's
semi-autobiographical 1997 film Private Parts. This film appearance was
the beginning of a series of non-porn film and television roles. In 1997,
Jameson made an appearance for an Extreme Championship Wrestling PPV,
Hardcore Heaven '97 as the valet for the Dudley family; another appearance
at ECW Living Dangerously on March 1, 1998; and a few months where she was
ECW's on-screen interviewer. In 1998, she filmed a vignette with Val
Venis, a character in the WWE, for airing on WWE programming. In the late
1990s, Jameson guest hosted several episodes of the E! cable network's hit
travel/adventure/party show Wild On!, appearing scantily clad in tropical
locations.
Jameson was featured and interviewed on the British television show
"European Blue Review" on Channel 5.
Jameson voiced an animated version of herself in a July 2001 episode of
Family Guy entitled "Brian Does Hollywood." Her character won an award for
acting in a porn film directed by Brian Griffin, and at the close of the
episode Peter Griffin kidnaps her. In 2002, Jameson and Ron Jeremy played
themselves in Comedy Central's first feature television movie Porn 'n
Chicken, in the roles of speakers for a pornography viewing club. Also in
2002, she appeared in two video games, most notably voicing Candy Suxxx in
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Her character begins as a prostitute, but
goes on to success as a pornographic actress and is displayed on several
billboards within the game. Her performance won the 2003 G-Phoria "Best
Live Action/Voice Performance Award – Female".[ She also provided both the
appearance and the voice for "Daisy", a secret playable character for the
video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, who performs provocative tricks with
her clothing and skateboard. In 2003, Jameson appeared in two episodes of
the NBC prime time television show Mister Sterling as the girlfriend of a
political financier.
Jameson also appeared in a 2001 music video for the Eminem song "Without
Me." She can be seen in bed with Eminem as one of the "two trailer park
girls" that "go round the outside."
Some of her mainstream appearances sparked controversy. An interview with
Jameson contained in the 1999 Abercrombie & Fitch A&F Quarterly was part
of the motivation for Michigan Attorney General Jennifer Granholm and
Illinois Lieutenant Governor Corinne Wood to speak out against the hybrid
magazine-catalog. The campaign was joined by parents and Christian
conservative groups, and got the Quarterly removed from shelves and
eventually canceled in 2003.
In November 2001, the Oxford Union debating society invited Jameson to
come to Oxford to argue against the proposition "The House Believes that
Porn is Harmful." She wrote in her diary at the time, "I feel like I am
going to be out of my element, but, I could never pass this chance up...
it's a once in a lifetime thing." In the end, her side won the debate 204
to 27.
In February 2003, Pony International planned to feature her as one of
several porn stars in advertisements for athletic shoes. This was attacked
by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News in an editorial called "Using
Quasi-Prostitutes to Sell Sneakers", calling porn stars inappropriate role
models for teens. In response, The Harvard Crimson proposed a boycott of
O'Reilly and Fox News. Jameson herself sent a sarcastic email to the show,
writing:
I hope Bill understands the difference between a porn star and a hooker. I
assume he has done some research on the subject because he requested some
of my videos after we finished taping my appearance. I imagine he wanted
them for professional reasons.
In the months following the publication of her autobiography, she was
interviewed on NBC, CNBC, Fox News, and CNN, and the book was reviewed by
The New York Times, Reuters, and other respected outlets.
Samhain, a 2002 low budget horror film in which she starred with other
pornographic actresses including Ginger Lynn Allen, had sat unreleased
until 2005, when it was re-cut and released as Evil Breed: The Legend of
Samhain, with her featured prominently. She has another minor horror film
role in Sin-Jin Smyth, delayed from release in late 2006, and a starring
role in the comedy horror film Zombie Strippers, released in 2008. "Any
time you mix really sexy girls and huge amounts of gore, it's gonna be a
hit", she told Metromix.com
In February 2006, Comedy Central announced plans to feature Jameson as
"P-Whip", in a starring role in its first animated mobile phone series,
Samurai Love God. Mediaweek called her the biggest name attached to the
project. In April 2006, Jameson was the star of a video podcast ad for
Adidas, advertising Adicolor shoes by playing a provocative game of whack
a mole. In July 2006, Jenna Jameson became the first pornographic actress
to have a wax model at Madame Tussauds (in the Las Vegas museum). |
