Best Known As: Porn - Actor

Gist:  Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie Massoli; April 9, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and former pornographic actress of Italian descent, who has been called the world's most famous porn star and "The Queen of Porn".

She started acting in erotic films 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 pornographic film industry organizations. She has since won more than 20 adult film awards, and has been inducted into both the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and Adult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame.

Jameson founded pornographic 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 pornographic films in 2001. The first such film, Briana Loves Jenna (with Briana Banks), was named at the 2003 AVN Awards as the best-selling and best-renting pornographic title for 2002.

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: regular appearances on The Howard Stern Show; very popular guest-hosting stints on E! television's Wild On! and Talk Soup programs; a guest-starring voice-over role in a 2001 episode of the Fox animated television sitcom Family Guy; an award-winning voice-over role in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; and, a guest-starring role in two episodes of the 2003 NBC television series Mister Sterling. 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. She has also created a horror comic book with Virgin Comics entitled Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter, which was released in February 2008. She played the female lead character in the 2008 horror-comedy Zombie Strippers.

Life Facts:  Jameson was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her father is Lawrence Massoli, an Italian American police officer and program director for KVBC-TV. Her mother was Judith Brooke Hunt Massoli, a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in the Folies Bergère show at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. Her mother died of skin cancer on February 20, 1976, before her daughter's second birthday. She was a frequent entrant in beauty pageants as a child, and took ballet classes. In a featurette on the Zombie Strippers DVD, Jameson indicates she trained in dance for 15 years.

Jameson writes in her autobiography that in October 1990, 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. 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 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".

Jameson and Grdina formed ClubJenna as an Internet pornography company in 2000. ClubJenna.com was one of the first pornographic sites to provide more than pictures and videos; it provided explicit diaries, relationship advice, and even stock tips to paid members. The site reportedly was profitable in its third week. The business later diversified into multimedia pornographic entertainment, first by administering other porn stars' websites, then, in 2001, by production of pornographic films.

Early Club Jenna 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 said 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 cover girl in January, 2004 ? and ?it?s a really wild-looking shoot, even for a porn star.?

In 2004, the Club Jenna films expanded to starring other actresses without Jameson ? Krystal Steal, Jesse Capelli, McKenzie Lee, Ashton Moore and Sophia Rossi ? as Jameson stepped back from starring roles. The films were distributed and marketed by Vivid Entertainment, which Forbes magazine once called "the world's largest adult film company." They made up a third of ClubJenna's revenues, but over half of the profits.

Club Jenna was run as a family business, with Grdina's sister, Kris, as Vice President in charge of merchandising. In 2005, Club Jenna had estimated revenues of $30 million, with profits of about half that.

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 web site and movies. There is a line of sex toys licensed to Doc Johnson, and an "anatomically correct" Jenna Jameson action figure. Jackson Guitars made a limited series of King V guitars with Jameson's likeness. Y-Tell, ClubJenna's wireless company, sells Jenna Jameson "moan tones" (telephone ringtones), chat services, and games in partnerships with 20 carriers around the world, mostly in Europe and South America. Her prominent merchandising and mainstream media coverage has been criticised as "obscene" by Morality in Media.

In August 2005, Club Jenna 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 Club Jenna said the straight site had always had a lot of gay traffic. By 2006, Club Jenna 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 to operate as before.

On February 3, 2006, Jameson hosted a "Vivid ClubJenna Super Bowl Party" with several other Club Jenna 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. For 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 commentator.

On June 22, 2006, Playboy Enterprises Inc. 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 ramp up film production, producing about 30 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.

In April 2007, Tera Patrick and her production company Teravision filed a lawsuit against Jameson and Playboy Enterprises for failing to properly account for and pay royalties on revenue earned by Patrick's website, clubtera.com.

, at the XBIZ Award, November 2005]]

While Jameson has stated in the past that she is bisexual, and that she has slept with 100 women and 30 men off-screen in her life, 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. and Tommy Lee.

On December 20, 1996, Jameson married porn star/Wicked Pictures director Brad Armstrong (real name Rodney Hopkins). 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, after Brad discovered her sexual affair with Jorge Araya Montoya (whom she met in a visit to Costa Rica).

In the summer of 1998, Jameson met former pornographic studio owner Jay Grdina (born John G. Grdina), scion of a wealthy cattle-ranching family, who had entered pornographic film production after college. Since 1998, he has been 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/Hopkins ? and married June 22, 2003. They unsuccessfully tried to have children since mid-2004, as Jameson had planned to permanently retire from porn performing upon becoming a mother. The couple resided in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a Spanish-style mansion, bought for $2 million in 2002.

In November 2004, Jameson was diagnosed with skin cancer. Though surgery successfully removed it, she miscarried shortly after the diagnosis. She was unable to get pregnant again, even with in vitro fertilization. Jameson said the in vitro process "wasn't a good thing for me"; she gained weight and did not get pregnant. According to Jameson, the stresses of the cancer plus infertility led to her marriage's collapse.

In August 2006, Star magazine and TMZ.com confirmed with Jameson's publicist that she and Grdina had separated, and that Jameson was dating musician Dave Navarro.

In 2006, she began dating mixed martial artist and former UFC champion Tito Ortiz, whom she met on Myspace. Ortiz cancelled a November 12, 2006 appearance as the guest of honor at the United States Marine Corps birthday ball at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, when the Corps refused to let him bring Jameson as his guest. On November 30, 2006, in an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Ortiz stated that he is in love with Jameson, that she is no longer acting in pornography, and that they are in a monogamous relationship.

On December 12, 2006, Jameson filed for divorce from Grdina.

She introduced Ortiz and talked about their relationship at the 2008 AVN Adult Movie Awards while she was presenting an award. She also made brief appearances on two episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice to help Ortiz on the tasks assigned in those episodes.

In March 2007 at the AVN Awards, Jameson blamed her appearance on the divorce proceedings.

Jameson announced in August 2008 that she and Ortiz were expecting twins together in April 2009.

On March 16, 2009 Jameson gave birth to twin boys named Jesse Jameson Ortiz and Journey Jette Ortiz. Jesse weighed in at 4 lbs and Journey weighed 4 lbs 11 oz.

Career Facts:  She tried to follow in her mother's career as a Las Vegas showgirl, but most shows rejected her for not having the required height of 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm). She was hired at the Vegas World show, but left after two months stating that the schedule was brutal, and the money was terrible.

Her boyfriend Jack encouraged her to apply for jobs as a stripper, and in 1991, though underage, she began dancing in Las Vegas strip clubs using a fake I.D. After she was rejected from the Crazy Horse Too strip club because of the braces on her teeth, she removed them with a pair of needle-nose pliers and was accepted. After six months, she was earning US$2,000 per night, before finishing high school.

Her first stage name as a stripper was "Jennasis", She chose the name "Jenna Jameson" to use as a model after scrolling through the phone book for a last name that matched her first name, before finally deciding on Jameson for Jameson Whiskey, which she is known to drink.

Besides dancing, starting later in 1991, she posed 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" who had been taking advantage of her.

While in high school, she began taking drugs?cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine?accompanied by her brother (who was addicted to heroin when a friend put her in a wheelchair and sent her to her father, who was then living in Redding, California, in order to detox; her father did not recognize her when she got off the plane.

Jameson and Grdina formed ClubJenna as an Internet pornography company in 2000. ClubJenna.com was one of the first pornographic sites to provide more than pictures and videos; it provided explicit diaries, relationship advice, and even stock tips to paid members. The site reportedly was profitable in its third week. The business later diversified into multimedia pornographic entertainment, first by administering other porn stars' websites, then, in 2001, by production of pornographic films.

Early Club Jenna 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 said 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 cover girl in January, 2004 ? and ?it?s a really wild-looking shoot, even for a porn star.?

In 2004, the Club Jenna films expanded to starring other actresses without Jameson ? Krystal Steal, Jesse Capelli, McKenzie Lee, Ashton Moore and Sophia Rossi ? as Jameson stepped back from starring roles. The films were distributed and marketed by Vivid Entertainment, which Forbes magazine once called "the world's largest adult film company." They made up a third of ClubJenna's revenues, but over half of the profits.

Club Jenna was run as a family business, with Grdina's sister, Kris, as Vice President in charge of merchandising. In 2005, Club Jenna had estimated revenues of $30 million, with profits of about half that.

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 web site and movies. There is a line of sex toys licensed to Doc Johnson, and an "anatomically correct" Jenna Jameson action figure. Jackson Guitars made a limited series of King V guitars with Jameson's likeness. Y-Tell, ClubJenna's wireless company, sells Jenna Jameson "moan tones" (telephone ringtones), chat services, and games in partnerships with 20 carriers around the world, mostly in Europe and South America. Her prominent merchandising and mainstream media coverage has been criticised as "obscene" by Morality in Media.

In August 2005, Club Jenna 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 Club Jenna said the straight site had always had a lot of gay traffic. By 2006, Club Jenna 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 to operate as before.

On February 3, 2006, Jameson hosted a "Vivid ClubJenna Super Bowl Party" with several other Club Jenna 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. For 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 commentator.

On June 22, 2006, Playboy Enterprises Inc. 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 ramp up film production, producing about 30 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.

In April 2007, Tera Patrick and her production company Teravision filed a lawsuit against Jameson and Playboy Enterprises for failing to properly account for and pay royalties on revenue earned by Patrick's website, clubtera.com.

* Jenna Jameson filmography

* List of porn stars who appeared in mainstream films