There are, apparently, a lot of people who WERE aspiring actors and actresses in the legitimate theater, TV and movie worlds, who even got a few small roles in mainstream shows, but eventually chucked it to go into the world of porn. (Marilyn Chambers, e.g.)
There have also been a lot of successful actors/actresses in the world of porn who have managed to snag a small, “blink and you’ll miss them” role here or there in successful mainstream movies or TV shows (Jamie Gillis in Stallone’s Nighthawks, e.g.)
And there have been some female stars in the porn world who have managed to “transition” into raunchy teen comedies or late night soft-core cable TV or sleazy TV reality shows. (Not exactly what I’d call a step up into “legit” show biz, but YMMV.)
But has anyone been genuinely successful, a true star, in both the mainstream media and the porn world? No, not really. You CAN’T readily switch back and forth.Sure, some genuine porn stars appeared in, say, Boogie Nights, but did Veronica Hart ever parlay her small role as the judge into a major role on Grey’s Anatomy? Did Nina Hartley get offers to appear in a Woody Allen film? Nope.
Ron Jeremy may get to play himself in the next ***American Pie ***sequel and that’s not nothing. But he’s NEVER going to get hired to play a cop or a doctor on a network TV show.
Andrea True had several disco hits. She used the same stage name for her adult films and her disco music. “More, More, More”, peaked at #4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the UK Singles Chart.
Sibel Kikelli did porn (real porn) before achieving critical success in the German film Head On. She continued to work, quite successfully, in German movies. Not Hollywood, I know, but she did go on to have a role in Game of Thrones. Not a bit part, either.
I’d say Traci Lords has the category pretty much to herself. She was a major-name porn star with dozens of movies, and her legitimate career spans decades and dozens of appearances.
None of the others really cross over that much - they’re porn stars with one or two bit legit roles, or legit stars who slummed a few times. No one who is a name-brand success on both sides of the, uh, mattress.
Nude scenes are not porn. If you’re going to list every actress who’s done a nude scene, you’ll list just about every actress in Hollywood. And most actors as well.
I’m curious. Why would you mention a nude scene when the subject is porn?
What about that young girl from Family Matters? Jaime Foxworthy or something like that. Didn’t she go on to do porn? Or do the actresses have to have done pron before hollyweird?
Sibel Kekilli, cited by me (and Purd Werfect) above, *might *be an exception. She’s certainly had genuine success in movies (although not in the US), both commercially and critically. And she’s had some success in American television.
She did hard-core porn before her breakthrough into mainstream film. And she was brilliant. If you want to see how good she is, get Head On off Netflix (you’ll also see how astonishingly beautiful she was before an ill-advised nose job, although she’s still quite beautiful).
But I have no idea at all if she was a star in German porn before she broke into regular movies. She might have been, or she might have just been a pretty girl in a few porn flicks. No idea.
“True star” may be asking for a bit much, but what about Sasha Gray as mentioned above? A Soderbergh film and “Entourage”. Okay, sure, playing to type…but she’s also got an Elijah Wood movie coming up.
Her porn name was Dilara, and while she wasn’t a big star, her scenes are quite enjoyable. By the standard of porn, they are fairly normal. By the standards of German porn, they are downright tame. Not more than one guy at a time, only a few anal scenes. She might have been able to stonewall and deny that she was Dilara if she didn’t have those tattoos.
But again, this is one of those cases of “minor legit player, goes into porn when that doesn’t work out” as **astorian **and Amateur Barbarian pointed out. She has apparently no mainstream career left.
BTW, there is also, in the current generation, the phenomenon of the “legit” celeb (or would-be celeb) who has a sex tape “leaked”. By now I assume every such incident is a deliberate plant in order to get publicity.
You haven’t watched many recent hard-Rs, have you…
No, it was “simulated,” for all values of sex not involving the appearance of genitalia or penetration. Nontrivial for the era, though, and a major name star. Look at the stir Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie and Kris Kristofferson/Sarah Miles got for gritty, realistic and probably simulated sex in movies of that time. The Collins stuff was nowhere near that quality, just softcore shit.
I can’t remember which of her crap from the 1970s falls into this category. Most of it, I think.
I haven’t, no. So cite the names of hard R films with explicit penetrative sex.
And this ends the argument since porn equals penetration. We can argue exceptions, like watersports, but for 99% of mainstream porn penetration or the lesbian equivalent is the sole purpose of its existence. Suggestive simulated sex is not porn, by definition. Softcore is not hardcore, by definition.
If you include nudity or simulated sex, then this thread has no meaning whatsoever. It becomes a game to find people who haven’t done that. Margaret Dumont, maybe.
Softcore porn is still porn. That’s why it’s called softcore porn. With the word porn right in the name and all.
The difference between porn and not porn is a bit elusive, as Justice Frankfurter noted. It’s not as simple as penetration or no penetration. Plenty of stuff sold in adult markets doesn’t have penetration in it.
My take is that non-porn has to have something to it besides getting the viewer off. Sure there are scenes in many mainstream movies that can be and have been masturbated to, but generally people could still be interested in the movie after they’ve gotten off. Very few people will watch porn for non-masturbatory reasons. Maybe as camp or something.
It’s a fuzzy boundary and I’m sure long lists of exceptions can be made, but that’s the general idea.