Annie Sprinkle - Biography

Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg; July 23, 1954) is an American former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer. She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1986 and earned a degree in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco in 1992. Currently, Dr. Sprinkle works as a performance artist and sex educator. Sprinkle, who is bisexual, married her long-time partner, Beth Stephens, in Canada on January 14, 2007.

Life and career

Sprinkle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is known as the "prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist." Her best known theater and performance art piece is her Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to "celebrate the female body" by viewing her cervix with a speculum and flashlight. She also performed The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute, in which she did a "sex magic" masturbation ritual on stage. She has toured one-woman shows internationally for 17 years, some of which were are titled Post Porn Modernist, Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, Hardcore from the Heart, and, currently, Exposed; Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art.

Her publications, spanning more than three decades, are studied in courses at numerous universities, in theater history, women's studies, and film studies courses. She also is a faculty member at The New School of Erotic Touch.

Annie Sprinkle began working at the ticket booth in an adult theater at 17, and assisted the theater owner in the making of short porn flicks. She received her break in acting when a porn actress failed to show up for filming and she offered to fill in. Annie's first porn movie was Teenage Deviate, which was released in 1975. Perhaps her best known featured role was in Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (co-directed by Sprinkle and sexploitation veteran Joseph W. Sarno) which was the #2 grossing porn film of 1981.

In 1991, Sprinkle created the Sluts and Goddesses workshop, which became the basis for her 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, and featured music by composer Pauline Oliveros.

She later starred in Nick Zedd's experimental films War Is Menstrual Envy (1992), Ecstasy In Entropy (1999), and Electra Elf: The Beginning (2005).

She has appeared in over 200 films, including hard and softcore pornography, B movies, loops, numerous documentaries, and four HBO Real Sex programs. She has produced, directed, and starred in several of her own films, such as Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn. Her work in these films has earned her a spot on the Adult Star Path of Fame in Edison, New Jersey.

Sprinkle's work has always been about sexuality, with a political, spiritual, and artistic bent. In December 2005, she committed to doing seven years of art projects about love with her wife and art collaborator, Beth Stephens. They call this their Love Art Laboratory. Part of their project is to do an experimental art wedding each year, and each year has a different theme and color. The seven-year theme was adapted to their project by invitation of artist Linda M. Montano.

Sprinkle and Stephens have been exploring their ecosexuality since they married the Earth and took it as their lover in a ceremony presided over by Guillermo Gómez-Peña on May 2008 in Santa Cruz. They also created a new field of research they coined Sexecology—which explores the places where sexology and ecology intersect. They co-created an experimental theater piece, Dirty Sexecology—25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth.

According to John Heidenry, Annie Sprinkle was the lover of the Dutch anarchist Willem de Ridder, and of the pornographer Marco Vassi.

Nickname

Steinberg first gave herself the name "Annie" when she started working in pornography. As her career continued she had an epiphany one night and she says "as if from the goddess herself" the name Annie Sprinkle came to her. She thought the name appropriate because "I was attracted by the sprinkles over ice cones (I am a bit of a sugaraholic!) and by the sound of humidity. I like cascades, urine, vaginal fluid, sweat, anything wet. So the name "Annie Sprinkle" seemed perfect.

Bibliography

Sprinkle, A. Post-porn modernist: my 25 years as a multimedia whore. Cleis Press, 1998. ISBN 1-57344-039-6
Sprinkle, A. Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex—Make Over Your Love Life with One of the Worlds Greatest Sex Experts. Tarcher/PEnguin 2005. ISBN 1-58542-412-9
Sprinkle, A. Hardcore from the Heart—The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance. Continuum International Publishing Group 2001 ISBN 0-8264-4893-3
Heidenry, John. What Wild Ecstasy. The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Reviewed by Robert Christgau in The New York Times, April 27, 1997.