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The Age. From porn to the Oscars?
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by Bruce Elder
September 4, 2009
Working girl … Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is a high-class escort paid to play girlfriend.
Adult-film actor Sasha Grey, star of Soderbergh's The Girlfriend
Experience, is cultivating a career in Hollywood.
What is a porn star like? Do they fulfil the cliche of ''women in micro-minis and four-inch stilettos and fishnet stockings, actresses … made up in Day-Glo mascara and cornea-damaging, super-reflective lip gloss, [resembling] garish orchids''? This is how Los Angeles Magazine writer Dave Gardetta described them after six months researching a story on porn star Sasha Grey in California's infamous San Fernando Valley.
Sitting at the Hilton in Sydney with Sasha Grey is a surprise. First, she is very attractive in a very non-garish way. Second, if you saw her walking down the street in Sydney, with her knee-length boots and her demure face with its oh-so-subtle make-up, you'd think she was just another very successful, pretty, vibrant young executive.
There's no hint that this 22-year-old, who was born Marina Ann Hantzis in Sacramento, California, has made, according to the Internet Movie Database, a staggering 176 movies since 2006 including such undoubted classics as My Evil Sluts 3.
That's more than twice the movies Paul Newman made in a career lasting 54 years. Even the prolific Jack Nicholson has only made 46 movies in the past 40 years.
When asked about this extraordinary level of productivity, Grey smiles and, with a knowing look, observes: ''I think what the outside doesn't understand is that you can shoot a scene in four hours. It might say on your resumé that you've made 160 films but it is actually 160 scenes. So you are not doing five scenes in the one film. It is a lot quicker to shoot, especially because of video.''
And now Grey, who can declare after only three years in the business that she is ''controlling my own product and I have my own company. I am able to create the kind of movies where I have the say from beginning to end as a producer and performer'', has expanded into mainstream movies with the lead role in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience.
For those unfamiliar with the sexual mores of New York, the ''girlfriend experience'' is where a wealthy man hires a hooker on the condition that she behaves as though she is his girlfriend, which usually involves being interested in what he talks about, going out to dinner, being a companion and, almost incidentally, providing sex.
The Girlfriend Experience is another contribution to Soderbergh's ''blockbuster-then-art film'' cycle, which has seen his work on Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen balanced by low-budget art films such as Full Frontal (2002) and Bubble (2005).
