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".

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 in Nevada, Arizona and Montana, usually living in a trailer home or with her paternal grandmother.

She and her older brother Tony 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.

In a featurette on the Zombie Strippers DVD, Jameson indicates she trained in dance for 15 years.

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 that 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.

Preacher has denied the rape ever occurred.

Rather than tell her father, she left home and moved in with Jack in her first serious relationship.

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.

According to E!, her brother Tony, who later owned a tattoo parlor himself, added the inscription "Heart Breaker".

She 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 ft.

She was hired at Disneyland Resort, but she left after two months, stating concerns over the schedule and salary.

Her 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 she was rejected from the Crazy Horse Too strip club because of her braces, she removed them with Pliers and was accepted.

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 of the name "Jenna Jameson".

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 has also crossed over into mainstream pop culture, starting with a minor role in Howard Stern's 1997 film Private Parts.

Her mainstream appearances continued with several guest-hosting and guest-starring on various television programs.

Playboy TV hosted her Jenna's American Sex Star reality show, in which aspiring porn stars competed for a ClubJenna contract.

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 (with Briana Banks), was named at the 2003 AVN Awards as the best-selling and best-renting pornographic title for 2002.

Her 2004 autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.

By 2005, ClubJenna had revenues of US$30 million with profits estimated at half that.

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.