Porn Star Hits It Big as Best-Selling Writer
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – She has two bodyguards, four dogs, a surgically enhanced double D-cup bust and an almost 600-page book on the best-seller list.
And the fact she spends a lot of her time naked has nothing to do with living in the sunny climes of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Indeed if, as some have suggested, porn stars are the new socialites, Jenna Jameson, whose raunchy memoir has been on the New York Times best seller list for months, is more at home in a G-string than an evening gown.
“How To Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale,” written with Neil Strauss, is more self-absorbed than Bill Clinton’s autobiography although Jameson says :”Clinton had more sex.”
That depends, of course, on what ones mean by sex, undeniably the thrust of Jameson’s oeuvre. The book teems with pictures of bare-breasts, comic book panels, handwritten diary entries and graphic detail.
“I’ve had … women tell me I’m their idol,” 30-year-old Jameson said in an interview. “They want to be like me. They’re seeing the glamour icon but don’t realize … there are more facets to me besides spreading my legs.”
Born in Las Vegas to a cop turned criminal father and showgirl mother who died when she was two, Jameson entered the X-rated world at age 17.
Wanting to be a stripper at Las Vegas’s Crazy Horse Too, the voluptuous blonde was told to come back after getting rid of her braces. That night, Jameson says, she yanked them from her teeth with pliers and wire-cutters and never looked back.
Changing her name to Jameson (after the Irish whiskey), she made her way from stripper to X-rated photo model, eventually becoming a porn performer. The book chronicles a litany of sordid escapades, including a gang rape and Jameson’s eating disorders, drug addictions and numerous lesbian and three-way affairs, both on and off camera.
As a cinematic porn goddess, Jameson says she worked only five times a year, usually with the same partner. “I was lucky to not have caught any sexual diseases, even though I worked without condoms for two years.”
Today Jameson says she is monogamous and happily married and only has sex — both on-screen and off- — with her husband, Jay Grdina, an adult-film studio owner and business entrepreneur. The couple started a film production, marketing and web hosting company. So with Jameson a millionaire who no longer needs to bare her body for bucks, one wonders why she persists.
LOVES WORK
“I love what I do for a living,” said Jameson, dragging on a cigarette, the only vice she claims to still have.
“I’m also trying to change the way the industry is run, which is mostly headed by men who don’t take women seriously as business people. To change things for girls going into the industry, I have to continue. I want to continue.”
Like many actresses, Jameson worries about losing her beauty. “Our looks pay our bills. I get Botox and love it. I’m very expressive and I’m trying to keep lines from appearing. I did have a chin implant and I’m having breast-reduction surgery,” she said.
Downsizing her implants to a C cup seems right, Jameson says, because to remove them completely “would leave too much extra skin.”
“I’ll get a full reduction after I have children,” she said.
In the interim, the couple continue to produce hard-core films, with a Hollywood deal in the works for her autobiography.
“I initially wanted Kate Hudson to play me,” said Jameson, “but she’s not as endowed as I am. My fans have mentioned Pamela Anderson, Jaime Pressly and even Meryl Streep.”
Absurd as that sounds, it’s no more farcical than living in a world where a porn star achieves the American dream.
“I don’t know if I can spit out another book. Maybe it’ll be a coffee table book of photos or maybe I’ll focus on something more family-oriented.
“If I do have a daughter,” she said with resolve. “There’s no way in hell I would allow her to be a porn star and go through the things I went through.”
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