Sasha Grey is not your typical Hollywood performer, says Wendy Ide in the London Times. The 21-year-old star of Steven Soderbergh’s recent film The Girlfriend Experience is better known as a porn actress—and an unconventional one at that. Pale, petite, and elegant, she reads Nietzsche and Sartre, adores Italian neorealist cinema, and is proud of her chosen career. Brought up in working-class Sacramento, Grey started watching porn when she was 16 and decided that she could make a living at it. At first, she considered faking a British accent in her films to disguise her identity. “But then I thought, No, that’s ridiculous. If that’s a choice I’m going to make, I should be 100 percent proud to make it.” So she told her family up-front. “My mother and I still have a good relationship. My dad said, ‘As long as you accomplish what you set out to do, then okay.’” And she has: As well as having two more mainstream roles lined up, Grey has started directing porn. “For me, it’s about creating something that can get you off physically and intellectually. Something that’s unpredictable, so you don’t know when to fast-forward and when to play.”
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