Sasha Grey

Marina Ann Hantzis (born 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.

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".