Jenna Jameson
Jenna Marie Massoli, known professionally as Jenna Jameson, is an American businesswoman, writer, television personality, and former pornographic film actress. She has been named the world's most famous adult entertainment performer and "The Queen of Porn".
Jameson started acting in erotic videos in 1993 after having worked as a stripper and glamour 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 the X-Rated Critics Organization and Adult Video News Halls of Fame.
Jameson founded the adult-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 sexually explicit videos in 2001. The first such movie, Briana Loves Jenna, was named as the best-selling and best-renting pornographic title at the 2003 AVN Awards for 2002.
Jameson has also crossed over into mainstream pop culture, starting with a minor role in Howard Stern's biographical comedy film Private Parts.
Jameson announced her retirement from pornography at the 2008 AVN Awards, stating that she would never return to the industry. Although she no longer performs in pornographic films, she began working as a webcam model in 2013. In 2025, Jenna Jameson noted that she "switched sides" and left her previous lifestyle for the Christian faith.
Early life
Jenna Marie Massoli was born on April 9, 1974, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her father, Laurence Henry Massoli, was a police officer at the Las Vegas Sheriff's Department and program director for KSNV-DT. Her mother, Judith Brooke Hunt, was a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in the Folies Bergère show at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. Her mother died of melanoma on February 20, 1976, two months before her daughter's second birthday. The cancer treatments bankrupted the family, and they relocated to Nevada, Arizona, and Montana, usually living in a trailer home or with their paternal grandmother. She had an older brother, Tony. Both were raised Catholic, though they were essentially left to parent each other.Jameson was a frequent entrant in beauty pageants as a child and enrolled in ballet classes throughout her childhood.
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 in Fromberg, Montana, she was beaten with rocks and gang raped by four boys after a football game at Fromberg High School. The incident began after she attempted to hitchhike home, and she entered the car of the four while believing that she would be driven home. Jameson reported being raped a second time while still 16 by "Preacher," her boyfriend Jack's biker uncle. Preacher has denied that the rape ever occurred. Rather than tell her father, she left home and moved in with Jack, with whom she began her first serious relationship.
According to E!, her brother Tony, who later owned a tattoo parlor, added the inscription "Heart Breaker."
Career
Early career, education, and name
Jameson tried to follow in her mother's career as a Las Vegas showgirl, but most shows rejected her for not meeting the then-typically required height of. Eventually, she was hired at Disneyland Resort, but left after two months, stating concerns over the schedule and salary.Her then-boyfriend Jack encouraged her to apply for jobs as a dancer, and in 1991, though underage, she began dancing in Las Vegas strip clubs using a fake identification. After six months, she was earning US$2,000 per night, before graduating from Bonanza High School.
Her first stage name as a dancer was "Jennasis", which she later used as the name of a business that she incorporated. 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 of the whiskey she likes, and thought, "Ok, that's perfect." That night at work, she saw her brother and asked him what he thought. He said, "I'm drinking Jameson right now." And the name stuck.
Besides dancing, starting later in 1991, she began posing 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."
While in high school, she began taking drugs – cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine – accompanied by her brother 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 when a friend put her in a wheelchair and sent her to her father, who was then living in Redding, California, to detox; her father did not recognize her when she got off the plane.
Pornographic film
Jameson has said that she started acting in sex videos in retaliation for the infidelity of her then-boyfriend, Jack. She first appeared in an erotic film in 1993, a non-explicit softcore movie by Andrew Blake, with girlfriend Nikki Tyler. Her first pornographic movie scenes were filmed by Randy West and appeared in 1994's Up and Cummers 10 and Up and Cummers 11.Of her first adult movie, Randy West said
Jameson got her first breast implants on July 28, 1994, to enhance her stripping and movie careers.
Her first adult video appearances were lesbian scenes. 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. At the beginning of her career, Jameson promised herself that she would never do anal sex or double penetration scenes on film. Instead, her "signature move" was oral sex, lubricated with saliva. She has also never done any interracial sex scenes with men.
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. 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, in which 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 Video Vixen award. She was the first entertainer to win all three awards.
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.
Between 2005 and 2006, she hosted 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 January 2008, Jameson confirmed she was retiring from pornographic performances and has since said that she "won't even do a Maxim cover."
Jameson's first appearance at an adult-entertainment event since announcing her retirement was at the 2013 Exxxotica New Jersey convention in October. On January 15, 2014, Fleshlight released Jameson's signature artificial vagina. Jameson was also the master of ceremonies for the 2014 XBIZ Awards on January 24.
Business ventures
Jameson and Grdina formed ClubJenna as an Internet pornography company in 2000.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, 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 stated 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, 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 the cover girl in January 2004 – and "it's a really wild-looking shoot, even for a porn star."
In 2005, Jameson first directed a film, The Provocateur, released as Jenna's Provocateur in September 2006.
ClubJenna was run as a family business, with Grdina's sister, Kris, as vice president in charge of merchandising.
Jameson also capitalized on merchandising herself. Since May 2003, she has been appearing on a tall billboard in New York City's Times Square promoting her website 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. 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 as Saks Fifth Avenue and Colette boutiques. Her film and merchandising success enabled her to attain her goal of becoming the top porn star in the world.
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. By 2006, ClubJenna 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 operating as before.
On February 3, 2006, Jameson hosted a "Vivid ClubJenna Super Bowl Party" with several other ClubJenna 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. In 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 a commentator.
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 CEO Christie 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. On November 1, 2006, Playboy renamed one of the Spice Network's pay-per-view channels from The Hot Network to ClubJenna.