Jenna Marie Massoli (born April 9, 1974),[1][2][3] known professionally asJenna Jameson (/ˈdʒeɪmɪsən/), is an American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former pornographic film actress.[4] She has been named the world's most famous adult entertainment performer[5][6][7] and "The Queen of Porn".[8]
Jameson started acting in erotic videos in 1993 after having worked as astripper andglamour model. By 1996, she had won the "Top Newcomer" award from each of the three major adult movie organizations. She has since won more than 35 adult-video awards, and has been inducted into theX-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) andAdult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame.[9][10]
Jameson founded the adult-entertainment companyClubJenna in 2000 withJay Grdina, whom she later married and divorced. Initially, a single website, this business expanded into managing similar websites of other stars and began producing sexually explicit videos in 2001. The first such movie,Briana Loves Jenna (withBriana Banks), was named at the 2003AVN Awards as the best-selling and best-renting pornographic title for 2002.[11] By 2005, ClubJenna had revenues of US$30 million with profits estimated at half that.[5]
Jameson announced her retirement from pornography at the 2008AVN Awards, stating that she would never return to the industry.[12] Although she no longer performs in pornographic films, she began working as awebcam model in 2013.[4]
Early life
Jenna Marie Massoli was born on April 9, 1974, inLas Vegas, Nevada.[13][3] Her father, Laurence Henry Massoli, was a police officer at theLas Vegas Sheriff's Department and program director forKSNV-DT. Her mother, Judith Brooke Hunt, was a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in theFolies Bergère show at theTropicana Resort & Casino.[14][15] Her mother died ofmelanoma on February 20, 1976, two months before her daughter's second birthday.[16] The cancer treatments bankrupted the family and they relocated in Nevada, Arizona and Montana, usually living in a trailer home or with her paternal grandmother. She and her older brother Tony were raisedCatholic,[17][18] though they were essentially left to parent each other.[19]
Jameson was a frequent entrant inbeauty pageants as a child and enrolled in ballet classes throughout her childhood.[20] In a featurette on theZombie Strippers DVD, Jameson indicates she trained in dance for 15 years.[citation needed]
Jameson wrote in her autobiography that in October 1990, when she was 16 years old and while the family was living on a cattle ranch inFromberg, Montana, she was beaten with rocks and gang raped by four boys after afootball game at Fromberg High School. The incident began after she attempted tohitchhike home and she entered the car of the four boys while believing that she would be driven to her home. She reported being raped a second time while still 16 by "Preacher", her boyfriend Jack's biker uncle.[17] Preacher has denied the rape ever occurred.[21] Rather than tell her father, she left home and moved in with Jack in her first serious relationship.[16][22]
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.[5] According toE!, her brother Tony, who later owned a tattoo parlor himself,[14] added the inscription "Heart Breaker".[14][16]
Career
Early
Jameson 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).[11][23] She was hired atDisneyland Resort,[14] but she left after two months, stating concerns over the schedule and salary.[22]
Her boyfriend Jack encouraged her to apply for jobs as a dancer,[6] and in 1991, though underage, she began dancing in Las Vegasstrip clubs using a fake identification.[16][20] After she was rejected from theCrazy Horse Too strip club because of her braces, she removed them with pliers and was accepted.[5] After six months, she was earning US$2,000 per night, before graduating fromBonanza High School.[16]
Her first stage name as a dancer was "Jennasis",[15] which she later used as the name of a business that she incorporated ("Jennasis Killing Co.").[24] As for picking her permanent professional name, she said, "I had to come up with a good name. I didn't want a porno name. So I sat down, opened up the phone book and thumbed to the J's, cause I wanted it to match my first name." She saw 'James', but rejected "Jenna James" because it "sounds too porno". Right under that was 'Jameson' which struck her as being the name ofthe whiskey she likes and thought "Ok, that's perfect." That night at work she saw her brother and asked him what he thought of the name "Jenna Jameson". He said, "I'm drinking Jameson right now." And the name stuck after that.[16][25][26]
Besides dancing, starting later in 1991, she posed for nude photographs for photographerSuze Randall in Los Angeles, with the intention of getting intoPenthouse.[22][27] After her photos had appeared in several men's magazines under various names, she then stopped working for Randall, feeling Randall was "a shark".[28]
While in high school, she began taking drugs –cocaine,LSD, andmethamphetamine – accompanied by her brother (who was addicted toheroin[14]) and at times her father.[17] 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 (34 kg)[29] when a friend put her in a wheelchair and sent her to her father, who was then living inRedding, California, in order to detox; her father did not recognize her when she got off the plane.[17]
Jameson says that she started acting in sex videos in retaliation for the infidelity of her boyfriend, Jack.[5][22] She first appeared in an erotic film in 1993, a non-explicitsoftcore movie byAndrew Blake,[30] with girlfriendNikki Tyler.[11] Her first pornographic movie scenes were filmed byRandy West and appeared in 1994'sUp and Cummers 10 andUp and Cummers 11.[20]
Of her first adult movie, Randy West said "Jenna contacted me and said she wanted to get into the XXX business, but her agent didn't want her to do porn. A month later I'm on a shoot inWoodland Hills (aSan Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles), and there's Jenna. She said she wanted to get into the business, despite what her agent said. I told her if you want to just do a girl/girl scene, we can do that. She said she wanted to work withKylie Ireland, so I set it up. When the sex started, she just fucking rocked! I knew Jenna was special right off the bat. I figured she'd be the nextGinger Lynn, but nobody had any idea she was going to be as big as she turned out to be. Jenna told me when we first met that she was going to be a star."[31]
Jameson got her firstbreast implants on July 28, 1994, to enhance her stripping and movie careers.[32]
Jameson's first adult video appearances werelesbian 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."[11] Her first heterosexual scene was inUp and Cummers 11 (1994).[33] At the beginning of her career, she promised herself that she would never doanal sex ordouble penetration scenes on film.[6] Instead, her "signature move" wasoral sex, lubricated withsaliva.[34][35] She has also never done anyinterracial sex scenes with men (despite that category's runaway popularity during the 2000s).[36]
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.[37] Her first movie after that wasSilk Stockings.[38] Later in 1995,Wicked Pictures, a then small pornographic film production company, signed her to an exclusive contract.[5][39] 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."[17][28]
The contract earned Jameson US$6,000 for each of eight movies in her first year.[16] Her first big-budget production wasBlue Movie (1995), where she played a reporter investigating a porn set; it won multipleAVN Awards.[20] In 1996, Jameson won top awards from three major industry organizations, the XRCO Best New Starlet award, the AVN Best New Starlet Award, and theFans of X-Rated Entertainment (F.O.X.E.) Video Vixen award. She was the first entertainer to win all three awards.[20]
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.[40] Her husband Jay Grdina has said that she earned as much as $25,000 per night dancing.[7]
Between 2005 and 2006, she hostedPlayboy TV'sJenna'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.[41]
In January 2008, Jameson confirmed she was retiring from pornographic performances[42] and has since said that she "won't even do aMaxim cover".[43]
Jameson and Grdina formedClubJenna 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 the production of pornographic films.[5]
Early ClubJenna 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.[5][47] 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.[7]
In a January 2009 interview withWilliam Shatner onShatner's Raw Nerve, Jameson said she came close to buyingPenthouse magazine when publisherBob 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.[48]New York Magazine'sIntelligencer 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."[49]
In 2004, the ClubJenna 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.[5] In 2005 Jameson first directed a film,The Provocateur, released asJenna's Provocateur in September 2006.[50] The ClubJenna films were distributed and marketed byVivid Entertainment, whichForbes magazine once called "the world's largest adult film company".[5] They made up a third of ClubJenna's revenues, but over half of the profits.[5]
ClubJenna was run as a family business, with Grdina's sister, Kris, as vice president in charge of merchandising.[14][51] In 2005, ClubJenna had estimated revenues of $30 million, with profits of about half that.[5]
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'sTimes Square promoting her web site and movies.[14][47] The first advertisement displayed her wearing only a thong and read "Who Says They Cleaned Up Times Square?"[52] There is a line ofsex toys licensed toDoc Johnson, and an "anatomically correct" Jenna Jamesonaction figure.[5][17] She stars in her ownsex simulation video game,Virtually Jenna, in which the goal is to bring a 3D model of her to orgasm.[53][54] 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.[5] 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 such asSaks Fifth Avenue andColette boutiques.[55] Her film and merchandising success enabled her to attain her goal of becoming the top porn star in the world.[56]
In August 2005, ClubJenna 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 ClubJenna said the straight site had always had a lot of gay traffic.[57][58] By 2006, ClubJenna administered more than 150 official sites for other adult entertainment industry stars.[51]
In August 2005, a group of business investors that included Jameson purchased Babes Cabaret, astrip club inScottsdale, Arizona, intending to make it the first foray of ClubJenna into live entertainment.[59] 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 bannedlap dances, the dancers' main source of revenue.[60][61] Jameson argued strongly against the ordinance, and helped organize a petition against it. On September 12, 2006, in areferendum on the ordinance, voters struck down the stricter rules, allowing the club to continue to operate as before.[62]
On February 3, 2006, Jameson hosted a "Vivid ClubJenna Super Bowl Party" with several other ClubJenna andVivid Girls at the Zoo Club inDetroit, Michigan for a $500 to $1,000 ticket price.[63] It featured a lingerie show, but no planned nudity or sex acts.[64] When first announced, the party caused controversy with theNational Football League, which did not sanction this as an officialSuper Bowl event.[65] For 2007, Jameson signed up to play quarterback in theLingerie Bowl, but retired due to her insurance company's damage concerns. She instead acted as commentator.[66]
On June 22, 2006,Playboy Enterprises announced that it had bought ClubJenna Inc., along with an agreement to have both Jameson and Grdina stay on as contracted executives. Playboy CEOChristie Hefner said that she expected to rapidly increase film production, producing about thirty 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.[67] On November 1, 2006, Playboy renamed one of theSpice Network'spay-per-view channels from The Hot Network to ClubJenna.[68]
The book covers her early career from her beginning in show business living with her tattoo artist boyfriend, through receiving the PornographicHot d'Or award atCannes, and wedding pictures from her second marriage.[71] It does not omit sordid details, describing her two rapes, drug addictions, an unhappy first marriage, and numerous affairs with men and women.[28] The first-person narrative is broken up by personal photos, childhood diary entries, family interviews, moviescripts, andcomic panels.[72]
The autobiography publisher,Judith Regan, also served as executive producer of atie-in television news special,Jenna Jameson's Confessions,[73] airing onVH1 on August 16, 2004, one day before the book's launch.[74] 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 theA&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".[75] Jameson's suit claimed that the A&E deal preceded the ReganBooks contract.[76] 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.[77]
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 recentvaginoplasty.[78][79]
In April 2013, Jameson announced she was working on a fictionalerotic novel calledSugar. It was co-written with Hope Tarr and published bySkyhorse Publishing. It was released on October 21, 2013.[80]
Mainstream appearances
Jameson in 2005
Jameson is also known for achieving a high level of celebrity outside of pornography – even bringing pornography itself closer to mainstream society's awareness and acceptance.[20][28][55] She has said: "I've always embraced my hard-core roots, but becoming a household name was an important thing to me."[5]
In 1995, Jameson sent photos of herself to radio hostHoward Stern.[16] She became a regular guest on his show, appearing more than 30 times,[5] and played the role of "Mandy", the "First Nude Woman on Radio", in Stern's semi-autobiographical 1997 filmPrivate Parts.[81][82] This film appearance was the beginning of a series of non-porn film and television roles. In 1997, Jameson made an appearance for anExtreme Championship Wrestling pay-per-view,Hardcore Heaven '97 as the valet forThe Dudley Boyz; another appearance atECW Living Dangerously on March 1, 1998; and a few months where she was ECW's on-screen interviewer.[83] In 1998, she filmed a vignette withVal Venis, a character in theWWE, for airing on WWE programming. In the late 1990s, Jamesonguest hosted several episodes of the E! cable network's hit travel/adventure/party showWild On!, appearing scantily clad in tropical locations.[16][11] Jameson was featured and interviewed on the British television showEuropean Blue Review on Channel 5.[84]
Jameson appeared in a 2002 music video for theEminem song "Without Me".[85] She can be seen in bed with Eminem as one of the "two trailer park girls" (the other one is fitness modelKiana Tom) that "go round the outside".[86] Jameson voiced an animated version of herself in a July 2001 episode ofFamily Guy entitled "Brian Does Hollywood". Her character won an award for acting in a porn film directed byBrian Griffin, and at the close of the episodePeter Griffin kidnaps her. In 2002, Jameson andRon Jeremy played themselves inComedy Central's first featuretelevision moviePorn 'n Chicken, in the roles of speakers for a pornography viewing club.[87] Also in 2002, she appeared in two video games, most notably voicingCandy Suxxx inGrand Theft Auto: Vice City. Her character begins as a prostitute, but goes on to become a successful pornographic actress and is displayed on several billboards within the game. Her performance won the 2003G-Phoria "Best Live Action/Voice Performance Award – Female".[88] She also provided both the appearance and the voice for "Daisy", a secret playable character for the video gameTony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, who performs provocative tricks with her clothing and skateboard.[89] In 2003, Jameson appeared in two episodes of theNBC prime-time television showMister Sterling as the girlfriend of a political financier.[11][47]
In the months following the publication of her autobiography, she was interviewed onNBC,CNBC, Fox News, and CNN,[7] and the book was reviewed byThe New York Times,Reuters, and other major media outlets.[71][72]
Jameson was featured prominently inSamhain, a low budget horror film in which she starred with other pornographic actresses includingGinger Lynn Allen. It was filmed in 2002 but had sat unreleased until 2005, when it was re-cut and released asEvil Breed: The Legend of Samhain.[90] She had another minor horror film role inSin-Jin Smyth, delayed from release until late 2006.[91]
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.[87][92]Mediaweek called her the biggest name attached to the project.[93] In April 2006, Jameson was the star of a videopodcast ad forAdidas, advertising Adicolor shoes by playing a provocative game ofwhack a mole.[94] Jameson made an appearance in the American reality TV showThe Simple Life in the fifth-season episode "Committed", broadcast on July 1, 2007;Paris Hilton andNicole Richie, while working in a "love camp", brought her in to help throw a "love ceremony" vow for the five dysfunctional couples. In 2008, Jameson had another starring role in the comedy horror filmZombie Strippers, loosely based onEugène Ionesco's playRhinoceros.[95]Madame Tussauds has a wax model of Jameson.[96]
Some of her mainstream appearances sparked controversy. An interview with Jameson contained in the 1999Abercrombie & FitchA&F Quarterly was part of the motivation for Michigan Attorney GeneralJennifer Granholm and Illinois Lieutenant GovernorCorinne Wood to speak out against the hybrid magazine-catalog.[99] The campaign was joined by parents and Christianconservative groups, and Abercrombie removed it from shelves in 2003.[100]
In November 2001, theOxford Union debating society invited Jameson to come toOxford to argue against the proposition "The House Believes that Porn is Harmful."[34] 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."[101] In the end, her side won the debate 204 to 27.[11]
In February 2003,Pony International planned to feature her as one of several pornographic actors in advertisements forathletic shoes. This was attacked byBill O'Reilly ofFox News in an editorial called "Using Quasi-Prostitutes to Sell Sneakers", calling pornographic actors inappropriate role models for teens.[102] In response,The Harvard Crimson proposed a boycott of O'Reilly and Fox News.[103] 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.[104]
In 2004 Jameson stated that she was bisexual, and that she had had sex with 100 women and 30 men off-screen in her life,[6] but by 2008 she described herself as "totally hetero".[132] She has stated the best relationship she ever had was her lesbian relationship with porn actressNikki Tyler, which she documents in her autobiography. They lived together at the start of her porn career and again before her second marriage.[11][20] Famous boyfriends discussed in her autobiography includeMarilyn Manson[133] andTommy Lee.[16][11][36]
On December 20, 1996, Jameson married porn star/Wicked Pictures directorBrad Armstrong.[16][20] The marriage lasted just 10 weeks. Although they informally separated in March 1997, she remained contractually obligated to work on Wicked Pictures projects involving both of them. They legally separated and divorced in March 2001.[16]
Jameson met former pornographic studio ownerJay Grdina,[51] scion of a wealthy cattle-ranching family, who had entered pornographic film production after college.[5][134] From 1998 until Jameson's retirement, Grdina was Jameson's only on-screen male sex partner, acting under the name Justin Sterling. They were engaged in December 2000, well before her divorce from Armstrong,[16] and married June 22, 2003.[14] They tried to have children from mid-2004 onwards, as Jameson had planned to retire from adult entertainment upon becoming a mother.[5][6][8] The couple resided inScottsdale, Arizona, in a 6,700-square-foot (620 m2)Spanish-style mansion, bought for $2 million in 2002.[14]
Jameson announced in August 2008 that she and Ortiz were expecting twins in April 2009.[138] On March 16, 2009, Jameson gave birth to twin boys.[139][140] Jameson and Ortiz split up in March 2013. Ortiz was granted full custody of the twins.[141]
Jameson's father died on October 2, 2010, after suffering complications from triple bypass surgery.[142]
On May 25, 2012, Jameson was arrested inWestminster, California and charged with threemisdemeanor counts fordriving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, driving with ablood-alcohol level over the state legal limit, and driving on a suspended license after herRange Rover struck a light pole. She initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but later changed her plea to guilty. She was sentenced to three years of informal probation, ordered to pay $340 in fines, and participate in aMothers Against Drunk Driving victim impact panel. The charge for driving without a valid license was dismissed.[143][144]
As of 2014, Jameson had undergone extensive tattooing, almost completely covering both of her arms in sleeve tattoos.[145]
In June 2015, Jameson announced that she was converting toJudaism, in order to marry her boyfriend, Lior Bitton.[146] In October of that year,Israel's Channel 2 announced a reality television series documenting Jameson's conversion.[147]
On August 5, 2016, Jameson announced that she and Bitton were expecting their first child together.[148] On April 6, 2017, they welcomed a daughter, whom they named Batel.[149][150]
On January 12, 2022, Jameson announced that she was suffering fromGuillain–Barré syndrome,[151] although this was later proven to be a misdiagnosis.[152]
On February 1, 2023, Jameson confirmed in aTikTok video that she and Bitton had ended their relationship, and was in a relationship with barber and influencer Jessi Lawless.[150] She married Lawless on May 23, 2023.[153]
On April 17, 2024, Jameson's wife Jessi Lawless filed for annulment of their marriage after less than a year. Lawless posted a video on herInstagram explaining that "the 50-year-old former adult film star's alleged drinking led to her decision to end the marriage."[154]
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