"My motto," says Annie Sprinkle, "is let there be pleasure on Earth, and let it begin with me."

Born 7/23/54 as Ellen Steinberg, Annie grew up in suburban L.A. a chubby and timid child of two academics. Like many other porn stars, she did ballet and Girl Scouts. Annie says she wasn't sexually abused, except for not being taught to masturbate, which she considers abuse.

Sprinkle lost her virginity at age 17, entered prostitution at 18 and began porn at 19. She became famous for releasing "Golden Showers" - urinating on someone.

"In the early days you couldn't do anal, but every movie I was in had an incest and a rape scene. Golden Showers used to be OK."

In 1998, Annie told the Spectator: " When I got into the business, it really was like Boogie Nights. For me that film was like my early adult life. I was Gerard Damiano's mistress when I was 18, who was so much like Burt Reynolds in the film. And porn star Mark "10 1/2" Stevens down the hall was doing and dealing crack. He was like the Dirk Diggler character. I thought it was very realistic. So at first I had very mixed feelings, looking at my old movies, really mixed. It was hard to deal with them in some ways.

"Some of them really were very violent and misogynist, and some of them were even self-abusive, really. Every other scene was like a date rape type scene. In 1973 we didn't know any better. That was the style. And now having grown up and matured, and become a little bit more aware and conscious and spiritual and all that, it was difficult. But since working with the material, I've grown to really love and appreciate it, and really enjoy the unselfconsciousness and creativity. I discovered that I really had been an actress, and I never really considered myself an actress. And some of those old movies are really interesting films. And so I have a lot of porno pride now. But I had to really look at some things.

"Like how sexually immature and inexperienced I was in some ways, and what a low self image I had. Well, like in S/M movies, the early, early S/M movies, where you're 'raped' and 'kidnapped' and 'forced' to do abominable and despicable acts like, you know, torture and fist f--- your 'brother' and very weird scenarios -- and then of course finding out that the director later went to prison for murdering his partner and quite possibly his wife. Then half a dozen of the men I did the scenes with had died of AIDS. Having to look at a scene where I was quite brutally gang banged by four guys. I'm virtually lifted in the air by my pussy. A really rough scene."

The second best selling videotape of 1982, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle begins with Annie showing pictures of her at three, five and 16 with her hymen intact. Then come pictures of her lucky parents who know what their daughter does for a living.

Annie deepthroats two men and begins discussing her ample breasts. She likes them so much that soon she's sucking Sassy's tits and Sassy's sucking hers. After they rub their cunts together, Ron Jeremy arrives and she brings Ron to a climax between her tits. Then Annie tells you "I like a man's ass and I love to have my ass played with too." But best of all from Annie's point of view is peeing on a guy. In a 20-minute segment [that's now edited out of this tape in most areas of the country], Annie not only reaches a climax but pees on the guy…eating her vulva." (Guide p.219)

Sprinkle wants sex with Andrea Dworkin. "She's hot and passionate. The woman gets things done. She has power, ideas, and she's outrageous. She's always busy with sex. She's hung up on... into violent imagery. Wild, kinky.

"I'd like to spend a weekend with Jesse Helms having sex and playing. He's sparked more sexually explicit art than anyone."

During the '80s, Annie put on "educational" shows where she gave her views on sexuality and allowed audience members to examine her clitoris.

Gauntlet magazine: "One of the first superstars of the original '70s porn era...this patron saint to the sexually disenfranchised and rebellious... developed a new church of adherents in her current incarnation as a sex workshop teacher, erotic photographer and uninhibited performance artist."

Annie believes that she's evolved onto a higher plateau of sexual consciousness and reincarnated as Anya, a New Age Sex Goddess.

From Sprinkles internet bio: "Unlike Ellen or Annie, Anya is an older and wiser ancient persona concerned with raising awareness of the AIDS era and expanding our concepts of sex through a combination of Eastern philosophy, yoga, meditative breathing and spiritual healing. Through a reciprocal exchange of sexual energy, the New Ancient Sex professed by Anya is inspired by Tantric, Taoist and Native American techniques of rhythmic breathing and deep eye gazing. Her "Guidelines for Safe Sex in the '90s" accept our generation's reality by assessing and demonstrating the integral omnipresence of condoms and the playful love of latex."

Annie says, "I can't even look at a porno anymore if it's not safe sex. It makes me throw up. I've lost too many friends."

Sprinkle's new persona nauseates many former fans such as Selwyn Harris. "I loved jerking off to Annie Sprinkle. She was a near obese, kosher beast with huge breasts who became famous for urinating at unconventional junctures.

"Why then did Sprinkle have to douse my inflamed infatuation with her by dumping bucket after bucket of smug, libido-destroying sowdung into an already polluted universe?

"Sprinkles one yenta campaign to equate prurience with nausea began sometime in the '80s when she bilked dupes into shelling out the bucks for the opportunity to stick their heads up her whelp gutter, nose plugs not included, in the name of education. She has since attempted to convert her "philosophy" into a cottage industry...

"Reality to Annie Sprinkle: There are no goddamn goddesses, and if there were, I doubt they'd be gargling testicles for a couple of hundred bucks a month, you bogus, self congratulatory, ink-ravenous bitch. Go squat on a menora the next time you feel a statement coming on." (HEVG)

The LA Times agrees. They called Annie's one-woman touring show of 1997 - "self-indulgent fluff that inadvertently raises issues Sprinkle determinedly glosses over.

"As a spokeswoman for pornography, Annie Sprinkle does have a great advantage over the stereotypical, strident anti-porn feminist. Sprinkle is warm, personable with a wistful touch of innocence. And like an attraction in a freak show, she cheerfully trots out her bountiful, pendulous breasts. At intermission, audience members can have Polaroids taken of this twosome bouncing on their heads.

"Certainly, Andrea Dworkin or Catherine McKinnon never have displayed such voyeuristic charms. In her new show, Sprinkle attempts to answer feminist critics, passing slight claims as solid arguments."