There aren’t all that many porn actresses who currently hold a spot in the AVN Hall Of Fame for all her AVN Awards won, who can boast having taken a self-imposed seven years’ sabbatical from porn acting and emerge the other side as a far bigger porn star than she ever was during her first run. Then again, not many porn actresses can boast mainstream attention the level of which Lisa Ann has enjoyed since her role parodying a certain vice-presidential in a couple of hugely successful films in the last couple of years.
While there is no doubt that her role as Serra Paylin‘ in Who’s Nailin Paylin and Obama Is Nailin’ Paylin has resulted in a large proportion of her current popularity, the suggestions by some within the porn industry that she is something of a one hit wonder with this role is somewhat unfair as far as I’m concerned. Her career started in 1993 after 3 years as an erotic dancer. A familiar route and tale into porn for many actresses, her dancing was initially only taken on as a way to pay herself through college.
Her initial run as an adult actress was a steady and generally pretty successful one. She found regular employment with several big name companies, notably Hustler Video, Metro, Bizarre Video and also a couple of titles with Wicked Pictures. She was a solid and dependable hardcore star during this time. While none of her titles may stand out as a recent classics, she was deemed quality enough to star in a number of self-titled videos courtesy of JB Video and Southern Shore.
In 1997 she opted out of the porn industry altogether as a result of the industry-wide AIDS scare. Many performers bow out of the industry at certain points – ‘retirements’, pregnancies and elongated time outs tend to be the reason. But her 7 year layoff was certainly one of the lengthiest amongst a top-line porn actress on record. She spent the majority of these years performing as a dancer on the road across America, and even on her return to the industry in 2004, it wasn’t initially as a performer.
Her return was originally as a talent scout and her work in that field led to the later creation of her own talent agency, which was bought out in a merger with Seymore Butts talent agency. But she found herself in great demand on her return as many asked for her to return as a performer. Now 32, she found the roles were offered were much different – many now saw as a mature performer who could play the role of MILF in films with plenty of ease.
And it is in that niche that she has found the greater part of her success even before Larry Flynt came calling. She became something of a freelancer, not really committing herself to one particular company. It was no surprise however that companies such as Brazzers, heavy on producing content in the MILF and mature genres, came calling. Her natural sexiness was immediately appealing and her popularity started to snowball quite impressively.
Her comeback was such a success that it garnered her a XRCO Award in 2006 – her first major industry award over 13 years after her debut. With this award and the acclaim that her comeback had largely garnered, her confidence grew and she started to branch out into further areas. She shot her first anal scene in 2006 with James Dean in Ass Cleavage 8 and has since shot many more anal scenes. Remarkably, considering the reasons she sat out of the porn industry for so long, last year she also shot her first creampie scene for the second installment of the superb Internal Damnation series.
But what about THAT role’ According to some reports, her role came about after
