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Marina Ann Hantzis (born March 14, 1988), known professionally as Sasha Grey, is an American actress, model, writer, musician, and former pornographic film actress. She began her acting career in the pornographic film industry, winning 15 awards for her work between 2007 and 2010, including the AVN Award for Female Performer of the Year in 2008. In 2023, she was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame and the XRCO Hall of Fame. After her 2009 feature film debut as the lead in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, Grey starred in independent films including Open Windows, the Canadian black comedy horror film Smash Cut and the horror film Would You Rather. In 2011, she played a fictionalized version of herself in the HBO comedy-drama series Entourage. Grey was a co-founder, singer, and writer of aTelecine, an industrial music band. She is the author of The Juliette Society trilogy of novels and also writes, directs, and co-produces films and music videos. Early life Grey was born in North Highlands, California and grew up in Sacramento, in a working-class family. Grey's parents divorced before she started middle school and she was subsequently raised by her mother, who remarried in 2000. She was raised as an adherent of Catholicism. Grey attended four high schools, including Highlands High in North Highlands. She graduated a year early at the age of 17, and in late 2005, she attended Sacramento City College and took classes in film, dance, and acting. She bussed tables at a Black Angus steakhouse until March 2006 and saved $7,000 for a move to Los Angeles. Career Pornographic films Grey made her hardcore pornography debut shortly after her 18th birthday in 2006. She initially considered calling herself Anna Karina, after the French New Wave actress of the same name, before choosing Sasha Grey. The name 'Sasha' was taken from Sascha Konietzko of the band KMFDM. Her surname either came from Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray or, alternatively, was inspired by how the Kinsey scale grades homosexual and heterosexual attraction as a continuum, a "scale of grey". Less than six months after entering the adult industry, Grey was featured in the November 2006 edition of Los Angeles magazine where she was flagged as a potential major star, perhaps the next Jenna Jameson. In December 2006, Grey was interviewed on the syndicated entertainment industry news program The Insider. In February 2007, Grey appeared on The Tyra Banks Show and discussed teenagers working in the sex industry. There was speculation the show was heavily edited and had not included her defense of adult film as a career choice. The show was also criticized for editing the interview to increase its dramatic value. In 2008, she became the youngest woman ever to win the AVN Female Performer of the Year Award In 2008 Grey announced that she would represent herself in the adult industry through her agency L.A. Factory Girls. Grey also appeared in Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, which won in 15 categories at the 26th AVN Awards ceremony in 2009, making it the most awarded film ever at the ceremony. Grey filmed her last adult film at age 21 in 2009 and announced her retirement from the industry on Facebook in April 2011. A. O. Scott of The New York Times described Grey's pornography career as "distinguished both by the extremity of what she is willing to do and an unusual degree of intellectual seriousness about doing it". Grey was the G4tv host in a two-hour documentary on Sexpo Australia for Attack of the Show! in 2009. In 2011, CNBC named Grey as one of the 12 most popular stars in adult films and noted that her mainstream roles had kept interest in her earlier adult film work high and that several companies continued to release compilations from her films. The Guardian counted her as starring in 270 adult films. Grey directed the films Birthday Party and The Seduction (2009). Modeling Grey was named Penthouse's Pet of the Month for July 2007 and was photographed by fashion photographer Terry Richardson. She was also profiled in the December 2008 Rolling Stone magazine and appeared twice in Playboy, in a December 2009 pictorial and as the cover feature in October 2010. Grey has modeled for various clients, including Max Azria's line Manoukian, American Apparel, and Flaunt. Grey modeled for Richard Kern as a part of Vice magazine's anti-fashion layout and appeared in his book and in the three-part VBS.tv program Shot by Kern. Grey appeared in Taschen's 25th anniversary reprint of Terry Richardson's book Terryworld and in his Wives, Wheels, Weapons, a companion book to James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning. She has modeled for artists James Jean, Zak Smith, Dave Naz, David Choe, and Frédéric Poincelet, who also created the artwork for her industrial music band aTelecine's ...And Six Dark Hours Pass album. In May 2010 she interviewed artist Terence Koh for BlackBook. In 2010, Grey was one of four actors who appeared in Julião Sarmento's video installation Leporello and was featured in the Richardson magazine A4. Richard Phillips made a short film called Sasha Grey in the Chemosphere for the Gagosian Gallery in 2011 and also portrayed her for the Frieze Art Fair in 2013. Hypocrite Design described Sasha Grey in the film as a "perpetually evolving figure". In an interview with Allure in 2018, Grey said her look was "definitely punk-inspired, definitely the anti-aesthetic, and I've definitely grown out of that because I'm older". Acting The Girlfriend Experience In director Steven Soderbergh's film The Girlfriend Experience, Grey played the lead role of Chelsea, an escort who is paid to act as her clients' girlfriend. Soderbergh cast Grey after reading her profile in Los Angeles magazine. As Grey prepared for her role in The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh asked her to watch Jean-Luc Godard's films Vivre sa vie and Pierrot le Fou, both of which star Anna Karina. Grey and Soderbergh also interviewed two escorts whom they took character traits and behaviors from. Reviews of Grey's performance in The Girlfriend Experience were mixed. Entertainment Weekly found Grey was "not so much a natural actress as a natural-born placid, affectless Barbie doll". New York said the actors "appear to be improvising (badly)". Violet Blue wrote that "Grey herself is as complex and layered and mesmerizing as a Soderbergh film itself—that's why Grey's fans cross all kinds of cultural and moral divides". On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 66% based on 138 reviews. In 2016, Glenn Kenny who played the majordomo of an escort-review site, described The Girlfriend Experience as a "digital film from another era" with most scenes being two-handers. Other Grey appeared in a 2009 episode of James Gunn's PG Porn with James Gunn, made a cameo appearance in Dick Rude's 2010 independent film Quit, and starred in the 2009 Canadian low-budget black comedy/horror film Smash Cut with David Hess from Odessa/Zed Filmwor.... Discover the Sasha Marie Marshall popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sasha Marie Marshall books.