Did you know that some famous celebrities worked at completely different occupations before they gained notoriety? Many of the well-known people we know today began their careers as exotic dancers, strippers, or porn performers in the adult entertainment business.
How different are these celebrities’ backgrounds from one another, one could wonder? It illustrates how life is unpredictable and you never know where it will take you.
This article from Adult B2B Marketing looks back at the top 10 actors from movies that started out in porn. Check to see if you can guess any of the items on the list before reading this.
Early in her career, in the early 1990s, Cameron Diaz—a former model well known for Charlie’s Angels and her sultry comedy Sex Tape—began to gain fame as the star of The Mask. In a 1992 softcore pornographic video, she costarred with another actress named Natasha and performed bondage, stiffening her nipples, and overwhelming an unidentified guy. The footage was leaked in 2004 following the photographer’s first attempts to threaten her into not disclosing the photos from the video. This led to a legal battle.
The X-Files actor David Duchovny began his acting career with the late-night, sensuous thriller The Red Shoes on Showtime in the 1990s. David Duchovny is the lead character in this sexy, softcore porn series who asks women to write letters detailing their personal connections. Softcore porn is as fanciful as it gets, with a strong focus on women’s sexual enlightenment and 90s love scenes.
In The Red Shoes, Matt LeBlanc—best known for his role in Friends—made his acting debut with David Duchovney as the romantic bike messenger who, in addition to delivering the message, provided the women a happy ending while perched on his bike! “God, it feels like a dream,” he said in response to a question concerning how long he spent filming the role. It’s a hot one, though. But after we were through, I became aware of how much I now appreciated the adjectives “sensual” and “erotic.”
Before becoming well-known for her Juliette book series, Sasha Grey made her name in pornographic movies. Between 2007 and 2010, she went on to win over 15 awards from AVN and XBIZ, making history in 2008 as the youngest performer to do so. In 2023, she was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. In her 2006 film debut, she made a name for herself by requesting a blow to the gut from her scene partner. She has since gained notoriety for producing some of the greatest hardcore pornographic films out there. She went on to direct two pornographic films in 2009, The Birthday Party and The Seduction.
In the 1970s, Sylvester Stallone starred in the main role of the softcore pornographic romance film The Party at Kitty and Stud’s, which launched his career. Most people associate Sylvester Stallone with Rocky and Rambo. The major focus of Morton M. Lewis‘s film is Kitty’s and her partner’s (oafish) sexual activities. The movie was re-released as The Italian Stallion in the 1970s in an attempt to cash in on Stallone’s now-famous status following his success with Rocky.
Number five on the list is Sunny Leone, a former Penthouse Pet who is currently an actress, model, writer, and campaigner. Sunny grew up in a Sikh Indian household after being born in Canada. She moved to America in the early 2000s and started doing modeling work for Penthouse and Hustler publications. In 2005, she signed a deal with Vivid Entertainment, which went on to create a number of her roles in lesbian hardcore films. Afterwards, she collaborated with male performers from 2007 to 2009. She is a Bollywood diva who quit the adult industry in 2013. She has starred in family-friendly movies including Girl Next Door.
Hollywood icon and movie star Marilyn Monroe comes in at number seven. Though there is significant debate about whether Marilyn Monroe counts among the celebrities who engaged in porn, many people think that the Netflix movie Blonde established that the Some Like It Hot star had engaged in old-fashioned six-minute porn production before her Hollywood career took off. The film was published by Spanish-born Mikel Barsa, who had been making fruitless attempts to sell the movie.
We had to talk about it even if he didn’t start off with porn. For his role as the attractive protagonist in the Magic Mike movies, Channing Tatum is well-known. Before becoming a successful worldwide film star, he started his career as a dancer in Florida under the name Chan Crawford. Before hanging up his yellow G-string and turning to acting and modeling, he worked as a stripper for eight months, which was excellent training for his subsequent part in the Magic Mike films.
Kim Kardashian first gained notoriety as a member of one of the most influential celebrity dynasties in 2007 after her sex video was leaked. In the video, she was seen with her 2002 boyfriend Ray J. Before publishing the tape, Vivid Entertainment claimed to have paid $1 million to a third party for it. There is no denying that Kim Kardashian and the well-known Keeping Up with the Kardashians TV program became household names as a result of the controversy surrounding the timing and source of the leak—there are even claims that it originated from within the Kardashian family.
Shae, who starred in the German film Head-On and the television series Game of Thrones, is the most well-known porn star on our list. Sibel Kekilli is considered a national treasure of Germany in the film business and a staunch opponent of discrimination based on gender. After spending six months in Essen, she started her career in the adult film industry, working on many porn films with directors such as Josef Baumberger and Harry S. Morgan until she was cast in her first feature-length role in 2002.
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