Biography of Sasha Grey (a.k.a.: Sasha Gray)

Sasha Grey is an award-winning American pornographic actress. She is also active outside of pornography through modeling, acting, and music.

Sasha grew up in a working-class family in Sacramento, California and her mother worked for the state of California. Her parents divorced before Grey finished middle school, and her mother remarried in 2000 when Grey was 12. She attended four high schools before graduating, unhappy in each one. In autumn 2005, she attended junior college and took classes in film, dance, and acting. Grey contemplated stripping during college so she wouldn't have to work as much, but eventually settled on porn. She waited tables at a steak house through March 2006 and saved $7,000 for a move to Los Angeles.

In May 2006 Grey moved to Los Angeles and started her career in adult films just after turning 18. Originally she toyed with the name Anna Karina (after the French New Wave actress) before deciding on her present name. The name "Sasha" was taken from Sascha Konietzko of the band KMFDM, and "Grey" represents Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Kinsey scale of sexuality.

Her first scene was an orgy with Rocco Siffredi for The Fashionistas 2 by John Stagliano. When she was younger, prior to her video career, she dated a cook at the steak house where she worked, who introduced her to slapping and other kinds of consensual degradation during sex. Nearly six months after entering the adult industry, Grey was featured in the November 2006 edition of Los Angeles where she was flagged as a potential major star, perhaps the next Jenna Jameson.

Less than a year after entering the industry, in January 2007, Grey was the recipient of awards for "Best Three Way Sex Scene" and "Best Group Scene" at the AVN adult movie awards. She was also nominated as "Best New Starlet", but lost to Naomi. Grey was named Pet of The Month for July 2007 and was photographed by fashion photographer Terry Richardson. In 2008, she became the youngest person to win the AVN "Female Performer of the Year" award.

A. O. Scott of The New York Times described her pornographic career as "distinguished both by the extremity of what she is willing to do and an unusual degree of intellectual seriousness about doing it."

After making her name in pornography, Grey has moved into other areas such as modeling. Grey was featured in the artwork for The Smashing Pumpkins 2007 album Zeitgeist, and appears in their music video "Superchrist". Grey was also featured in the music video for the song "Birthday Girl" by The Roots.

She has modeled for American Apparel and Richard Kern as a part of Vice magazine's anti-fashion layout, and appeared in a three-part VBS program, "Shot by Kern". She also appeared in Taschen's 25th anniversary reprint of Terry Richardson's Terryworld. Among other collaborations with Richardson, she has also appeared in Wives, Wheels, Weapons, a companion book to James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning. She has also modeled for artists James Jean, David Choe and Frederic Poincelet.

Grey appeared in an episode of James Gunn's PG Porn with James Gunn, as well as a cameo role in Dick Rude's independent film Quit, and stars in the upcoming Canadian low-budget black comedy/horror film Smash Cut from the Ottawa-based Odessa/Zed Filmworks. She plays a TV news personality who goes undercover as an actress in a horror film production, only to discover her older sister's murderer.

Most prominently, she plays the lead in Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh's film The Girlfriend Experience. Critics had mixed assessments of Grey's performance. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice writes:

"Are we watching an authentic sacred monster playing the part of a cute little chippie" or is it vice versa? (Imagine one performer embodying both the Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider roles in Last Tango in Paris.) Grey isn't the first porn actress to go straight, but she may be the first to allegorize her own situation "projecting an on-screen self-confidence that's indistinguishable from pathos."

In 2008, Grey began an industrial music collaboration, called ATelecine, with Pablo St. Francis. Their first EP, AVigillant Carpark, was released by New York label Pendu Sound in 7 inch vinyl only. She also contributed vocals to the Current 93 album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain.

Grey cites Jean-Luc Godard and David Bowie as influences on her life and career. She admires their careers for always reinventing themselves. In having Grey prepare for her role in The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh asked her to watch Godard's Vivre sa vie and Pierrot le fou. Vivre sa vie is about a prostitute who dreams about making it in the movies.