Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie Massoli) was born on April 9, 1974 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her father is Lawrence Massoli, an Italian-American program director for an NBC affiliate and a police officer. Her mother was Judith Brooke Hunt Massoli, a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in the Folies-Bergere show at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. Her mother died of skin cancer on February 20, 1976, before Jenna Massoli's second birthday. The cancer treatments bankrupted the family and they moved several times, including living in a trailer and moving in with her father's mother. Her father spent most of his time at work at the Las Vegas Sheriff's Department, and she became very close to her brother, Tony Massoli. She was a frequent entrant in beauty pageants as a child, and took ballet classes. In her autobiography, Massoli writes that in October 1990, while the family was living on a cattle ranch in Fromberg, Montana, she was beaten with rocks and gang raped by four boys after a football game. She says she was raped a second time, while still sixteen, by her boyfriend Jack's biker uncle, Preacher. Rather than tell her father, she left home and moved in with Jack in her first serious relationship. Jack was a tattoo artist, and gave her the first of a series of tattoos, one which would become her trademark tattoo, double hearts on her right buttock. According to Massoli's brother Tony, who later owned a tattoo parlor himself, added the inscription "HEART BREAKER". Jenna Massoli tried to follow in her mother's career as a Las Vegas showgirl, but most shows rejected her for not having the required height of 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm). She was hired at the Vegas World show, but left after two months stating that the schedule was brutal, and the money was terrible. Massoli's boyfriend Jack encouraged her to apply for jobs as a stripper, and in 1991, though underage, she began dancing in Las Vegas strip clubs using a fake I.D. After she was rejected from the Crazy Horse Too strip club because of the braces on her teeth, she removed them with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and was accepted. After six months, she was earning US$2000 per night, before finishing high school. Her first stage name as a stripper was "Jennasis", a name she later used for incorporating as "Jennasis Entertainment". She chose the name "Jenna Jameson" to use as a model after scrolling through the phone book for a last name that matched her first name, before finally decided on Jameson for Jameson Whiskey, which she drinks. Besides dancing, starting later in 1991, she posed for nude photographs for photographer Suze Randall in Los Angeles, hoping to get into Penthouse magazine. Jameson was paid $300 per day, without rights to the pictures. After her photos had appeared in several men's magazines under various names, Jameson stopped working for Randall, feeling Randall was "a shark", and had been taking advantage of her. While still in high school, Jameson began taking drugs ?“????????¬???‚?? cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamines ?“????????¬???‚?? accompanied by her brother (who was addicted to heroin) and at times her father. Her addiction became worse during her four years with her boyfriend. She eventually stopped eating properly and became too thin to model; Jack left her in 1994. She weighed 76 pounds (less than 35 kilograms) when a friend put her in a wheelchair and sent her to her father, who was then living in Redding, California, in order to detox; her father didn't recognize her when she got off the plane. Jameson says that she started acting in pornographic films in revenge for her boyfriend, Jack, cheating on her. She first appeared in an erotic film in 1993, a non-explicit softcore movie by Andrew Blake, with girlfriend Nikki Tyler, whom she had met modeling for Suze Randall. Her first pornographic movie scenes were filmed by Randy West and appeared in 1994's Up and Cummers 10 and Up and Cummers 11. She quickly achieved notice and appeared in several other pornographic films while still living in Las Vegas. Jameson got her first breast implants on July 28, 1994, to enhance her stripping and movie careers. By 2004, she had had 2 sets of breast implants, and a chin implant. Jameson's first pornographic film appearances were female only lesbian scenes. She says: "Girl-on-girl was easy and natural. Then they offered me lots of money to do boy-girl."Her first heterosexual scene was in Up and Cummers 11 (1994). At the beginning of her career, she promised herself never to do anal sex or double penetration scenes on film. She has also never done any interracial sex scenes with men. Instead, her "signature move" was oral sex, lubricated with plenty of saliva.In 1994, after overcoming her addiction by spending several weeks with her father and grandmother, Jameson relocated to Los Angeles to live with Nikki Tyler. She started modeling again, and in 1995 got her father's blessing to make a career out of pornographic films. Her first movie after that was Silk Stockings. Later in 1995, Wicked Pictures, a then small pornographic film production company, signed her to an exclusive contract. Jameson has stated that she is bisexual, and that she has slept with 100 women and 30 men off-screen in her life.She has stated the best relationship she ever had was her lesbian love affair with porn actress Nikki Tyler, which she documents in her autobiography. They lived together at the start of her porn career and again before her second marriage. Famous male boyfriends discussed in her autobiography include Marilyn Manson and Tommy Lee. On December 20, 1996, Jameson married porn star Brad Armstrong (real name Rodney Hopkins). They were together for only ten weeks, informally separating in March 1997, though continuing to act together in pornographic films. They legally separated and divorced in March 2001. In the summer of 1998, Jameson met former pornographic studio owner Jay Grdina (born John G. Grdina), scion of a wealthy cattle-ranching family, who had entered pornographic film production after college. Since 1998, he has been Jameson's only on-screen male sex partner, acting under the name Justin Sterling. They were engaged in December of 2000 ?“????????¬???‚?? before her divorce from Hopkins ?“????????¬???‚?? and married June 22, 2003 in a Roman Catholic-style ceremony. They unsuccessfully tried to have children since mid-2004, and Jameson planned to retire from acting in pornographic movies permanently after having their first child. The couple resided in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a 6,700-square-foot Spanish-style palace, bought for $2 million in 2002. In November of 2004, Jameson was diagnosed with skin cancer. Though surgery successfully removed the cancer, she miscarried shortly after the diagnosis, possibly due to stress. She was unable to get pregnant again, even with in vitro fertilization. Jameson said the in vitro process "wasn't a good thing for me"; she gained weight and did not get pregnant. According to Jameson, the stress of the cancer and then being unable to conceive resulted in the collapse of her marriage. In August 2006, Star magazine and TMZ.com confirmed with Jameson's publicist that she and Grdina had separated, and that Jameson was dating musician Dave Navarro. A more serious relationship seems to be with mixed martial artist and former UFC champion Tito Ortiz. Ortiz cancelled a November 12, 2006 appearance as the guest of honor at the United States Marine Corps birthday ball at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, when the Corps refused to let him bring Jameson as his guest. On November 30, 2006, in an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Ortiz stated that he is in love with Jameson, that she is no longer acting in pornography, and that they are in a monogamous relationship.On December 12, 2006, Jameson filed for divorce from Grdina.
In March 2007, Jameson blamed her anemic and gaunt appearance at the AVN Awards on the harsh divorce proceedings.
