Sasha Grey 15 Minutes With a Porn Star

Talking to a porn star is pretty boring. At least talking to Sasha Grey is. Not asking her about sex is like interviewing a brain surgeon about methods of fly fishing, and even when you’re discussing sex, she comes at it with the sort of clinical, professional tone that you’d expect anyone to discuss their job with. Which seems fair – even with over 80 films under her garter belt, she’s still only 21 and carries herself accordingly. She speaks about acting in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience in the same borrowed phrases of any young artist who doesn’t quite know what they’re doing yet. What’s unfair is that she’s expected to know, for whatever reason, because she’s become an icon in such a short time.

There’s no need to write anything about her brief career or her status as a porn star revolutionary because you already know it. To hear some journalists and insiders talk about her, you’d imagine that they are discussing Pablo Picasso or the woman who actually invented sex. Now, people are shouting her cultural importance from the rooftops, claiming that she’s changed the face of cinema as the first major female porn star to cross over into the mainstream. And all of those people are wrong.

I realize just how absurd that idea is about five minutes into my phone call with her. She sounds calm, her voice carries a sort of robotic grace and confidence as she swears she’s sharing the real Sasha Grey with me. Nothing is an act. This is her life. Who she is, is exactly what she’s sharing with the world – whether it be while arching her back for anal or ad-libbing for an Academy Award-winning director. Even she is wise enough to realize how absurd her perceived cultural importance is:

“I don’t know if my role in The Girlfriend Experience is necessarily something that will make a huge difference, but I think these next few films coming up, if they’re received well, that’s what will be the defining mark.”

Basically, everyone has got it wrong. Her cultural importance has nothing to do with crossing over, or at least, it has little to do with it. Even if she does continue to make movies where she isn’t fellating the luckiest pizza guy on the planet, she’d need to rise into the true mainstream before any milestones are made. That could be an incredible challenge for someone who is already as famous as she is. And here lies her true importance: Sasha Grey is a constant cultural contradiction.

First of all, I feel it’s important not to skirt the issue of whether or not I knew who Sasha Grey was before she was cast as one of Steven Soderbergh’s non-actors. Of course I did. I’m a red-blooded American male with the ability to type the phrase “ball gag” into a search engine. This is where the contradictions begin. Soderbergh essentially hired a hyper-famous unknown to star in his movie. It’s true that she’s more famous than Julia Roberts was when Roberts starred in Pretty Woman, but Grey got famous in the one industry that allows you to become a major star in secret. My mother certainly doesn’t know who she is, and a decent percentage of men will feign ignorance to her existence since watching porn is still taboo for some reason. Thus, Sasha Grey is an anonymous superstar. If she starts starring in romantic comedies alongside Ashton Kutcher while filming I Wanna Bang Your Sister 2, then she’ll have achieved something. And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.