She’s chiefly known for her, um, achievements in the adult-film industry — you don’t come by a nickname like “The Queen of Porn” for nothing, after all — but Jenna Jameson, perhaps more than any other pornographic entertainer in American history, has transcended the backroom video biz. How many other women have gone from hardcore porn to the New York Times Best Seller List?
Her prospects weren’t always so rosy. Born Jenna Marie Massoli, to a showgirl mother and TV director father, Jenna endured a life without her mom — who died when she was two — and a peripatetic childhood in which the family, bankrupted by medical expenses, constantly flirted with poverty.
And it got worse before it got better — Jenna was raped more than once, removed her own braces to land a gig as a stripper, and dealt with a drug addiction so serious that, by the time her family intervened, she weighed less than 80 pounds. Her first porn gig, fittingly, was an act of revenge against a cheating boyfriend.
Since all that, of course, Jenna has gone on to not only conquer the porn world — her Club Jenna studio is a multimillion-dollar enterprise — but has attained an unprecedented level of mainstream stardom. Aside from her bestselling autiobiography, she has appeared in several Hollywood films (most notably Howard Stern’s “Private Parts”), as well as various television shows and videogames.
Lately, rumors have run rampant that Jameson — who split from her second husband in late 2006 — has retired from adult moviemaking, which, while certainly a source of sadness for some of her fans, can’t be entirely a bad thing. Nothing but a good thing, however, are rumors that Scarlett Johansson is in talks to play Jameson in the film adaptation of her autobiography.
Jenna Says
On her talents:
“I’m good at a lot of things. Sex being one of them — so I think I’ve certainly succeeded at that.”
On luck:
“I was lucky to not have caught any sexual diseases , even though I worked without condoms for two years.”
On her fashion sense:
“Posing nude has to be one of my favorite things in the world.”