Jenna Jameson

Jenna Marie Massoli (born April 9, 1974), 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 (XRCO) and Adult Video News (AVN) 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 (along with Briana Banks), 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 (1997).

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."

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 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm). 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 ("Jennasis Killing Co."). 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 (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 (34 kg) 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.

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, but by 2008 she described herself as "totally hetero". She has stated the best relationship she ever had was her lesbian relationship with porn actress Nikki Tyler, which she documents in her autobiography. They lived together at the start of her porn career and again before her second marriage. Famous boyfriends discussed in her autobiography include Marilyn Manson and Tommy Lee.

On December 20, 1996, Jameson married porn star/Wicked Pictures director Brad Armstrong. 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.