Interview: Sasha Grey, Actor

Published on Friday 27 November 2009 16:18

A porn phenomenon at just 21, her role as an escort in a Steven Soderbergh film proves Sasha Grey is anything but another Boogie Nights cliché, writes James Mottram . . .

WHEN I first clap eyes on Sasha Grey, the 21-year-old American star of more than 180 pornographic movies, she's doing one of the things she does best. No, not that. She's working the camera, as a photographer snaps her outside the Notting Hill base of the distributor behind her latest movie.

The film in question is not a sequel to Teenage Whores 3, Bitchcraft 4, Soloerotica 10 or any of the other tastefully named skin-flicks she's made. Instead, it's The Girlfriend Experience, the new movie from the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh.

While she is just finishing up her (fully clothed) shoot, I'm led into a small conference room. Sitting at the table is her photographer fianc Ian, whose surly expression suggests he's fed up with men ogling his lady. "I think men are threatened by the idea of an independent young woman," she later tells me, after offering a firm businesslike handshake. "It's not just sexism. It's ageism. I think that's where a lot of that comes from. People cannot grasp the concept that a young woman can make clear decisions without regretting them later on. It's very hard for people to understand that."

A petite brunette, dressed in a long black winter coat, dark jeans, knee-high boots and a beige top, Grey is hardly what you might expect from a porn star. As Soderbergh notes: "She doesn't fit the mould. She's not damaged. She didn't come from a broken home. She wasn't abused. She's not a drug addict. She looks at this as a business, a job."

Indeed, her entry into the porn industry suggests consideration and care, not desperation and depravity. Raised in Sacramento, California, Grey – whose real name is Marina Ann Hantzis – claims she researched the industry for seven months before moving to Los Angeles. "That gave me a bit of time to really contemplate what I was doing and why I was doing it."

Partly, it came down to a desire to explore her feelings towards sex. "I was an old virgin compared with all my friends and I grew up feeling very guilty about my sexual fantasies and very ashamed," she says. "When I discovered my sexuality, I couldn't believe how hung up we all were." But how did her family react when she told them, two weeks after moving to LA? "Obviously my mom was not happy with it. She was crying and begged me to come home. And my Dad said, 'As long as you accomplish the things you say you want to accomplish – and don't f*** up – then good for you.' My sister was laughing – it was a nervous laugh. And my brother was like, 'Hey, as long as you're not a walking clich.'"

Inside a year, Grey was scooping gongs at the AVN adult movie awards before, in 2008, becoming the youngest person ever to claim Female Performer of the Year. But what truly helped her was a profile in Los Angeles magazine, trailing her across the first few months of her career. It was this that piqued Soderbergh's interest when he was in the process of developing The Girlfriend Experience. A chic low-budget drama, it tells the story of Chelsea, a high-class Manhattan escort, who offers her clients intimacy – "the girlfriend experience" – as well as sex.

Grey met two real-life escorts as part of her research. "The thing that stood out for me was that they both said, 'You really have to hang up your personality for these clients. You have to adapt this fake personality that suits what their interests are.' A lot of their clients are Republicans – and if you're not a Republican, how do you hold a conversation with someone who has these opposing views?"

I must admit this sounds shockingly naive, but it's one of the rare occasions when the super-confident Grey acts her age. So Chelsea puts on a persona? "Oh, definitely. She's there to listen. She's not there to vent her own feelings or issues."

Not unlike Grey, Chelsea is in her line of work because she wants to be. Still, Grey is quick to separate escorts and porn stars. "She has to deal with issues of legalities, so her business is more word-of-mouth. She is just beginning to figure out, 'Can I promote myself? Can I become more business savvy? What can I do to increase my clientele?' Whereas I've been able to do that from day one." It's always been this way, she says. "I remember buying candy bars at 25 cents and selling them for a dollar at school, and making $300." And now? "I understand that I'm a commodity and I'm OK with that. Nobody is forcing me into this."

Grey now has her own production company, Grey Art, for which she's already co-directed several movies, and has a heavy fan following on MySpace and Twitter. What's more, she's modelled for American Apparel, become the face of the French ready-to-wear label Manoukian and appeared in videos for the Smashing Pumpkins. And aside from The Girlfriend Experience, she's featured in Canadian horror Smash Cut, and has two films in the pipeline – the Paris-set romance Life and action movie Kayla Crow. But she claims she's not looking to simply cross over into the mainstream. "I really discourage anybody that wants to be an actor to get into the adult industry as a backdoor way in."

Even so, Grey is an avowed cinephile. She took film and drama classes in college, is a self-confessed fanatic of Jean-Luc Godard and even considered swiping her porn star name from French actress – and Godard muse – Anna Karina (the "Grey" was eventually plucked from the Kinsey scale of sexuality). Not that Grey is out to pretend that all porn stars are all sophisticates like herself. "You do see debauchery but it's not that often, and it's not at the level of Boogie Nights," she says. "I've seen a lot worse outside the industry."

It seems she's lived up to her brother's wishes: she's anything but a walking clich.

The Girlfriend Experience opens on Friday

twitter.com/sAshagrey

This article first appeared in the 29 November edition of Scotland on Sunday