Jenna Jameson

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 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.

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 "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 in Woodland Hills (a San 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-on-girl scene, we can do that. She said she wanted to work with Kylie 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 next Ginger 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."

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 (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, 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 (despite that category's runaway popularity during the 2000s).

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."

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 (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 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 (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 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 48-foot (15 m) 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.

Books

Jameson's autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 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. 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 Cómo Hacer El Amor Igual Que Una Estrella 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 to be 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.

In April 2013, Jameson announced she was working on a fictional erotic novel called Sugar. It was co-written with Hope Tarr and published by Skyhorse Publishing. It was released on October 21, 2013.

Mainstream appearances

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.

In 1995, Jameson sent photos of herself to radio host Howard Stern. She became a regular guest on his show 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-pornographic film and television roles. In 1997, Jameson made an appearance for an Extreme Championship Wrestling pay-per-view, Hardcore Heaven (1997), as the valet for the Dudley Boyz; 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 appeared in a 2002 music video for the Eminem song "Without Me". She can be seen in bed with Eminem as one of the "two trailer park girls" (the other one is fitness model Kiana Tom) that "go round the outside". 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 become a successful 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.

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 major media outlets.

Personal life

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.

Jameson met former pornographic studio owner Jay Grdina, scion of a wealthy cattle-ranching family, who had entered pornographic film production after college. 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, and married June 22, 2003. They tried to have children from mid-2004 onwards, as Jameson had planned to retire from adult entertainment upon becoming a mother. The couple resided in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a 6,700-square-foot (620 m2) Spanish-style mansion, bought for $2 million in 2002.

In October 2006, it was reported that Jameson began dating mixed martial artist and former UFC champion Tito Ortiz, whom she met on Myspace. On December 12, 2006, Jameson filed for divorce from Grdina.

Jameson announced in August 2008 that she and Ortiz were expecting twins in April 2009. On March 16, 2009, Jameson gave birth to twin boys. Jameson and Ortiz split up in March 2013. Ortiz was granted full custody of the twins.

Jameson's father died on October 2, 2010, after suffering complications from triple bypass surgery.

On May 25, 2012, Jameson was arrested in Westminster, California and charged with three misdemeanor counts for driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, driving with a blood-alcohol level over the state legal limit, and driving on a suspended license after her Range 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 a Mothers Against Drunk Driving victim impact panel. The charge for driving without a valid license was dismissed.