Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle, born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is known as the prostitute and pornstar turned into sex educator and artist. Coming from a middle-class Jewish family, she was shy and introverted in her childhood. It was after she lost her virginity aged 17 that she discovered sex and it quickly became her passion. That same year she began to work at the ticket booth of an adult theater and assisted the owner in the shooting of short porn flicks. After finishing high school she chose to turn into a prostitute instead of going to college.

That eventually took her to perform, getting her first movie performance in 1975 “Teenage Deviate”, although she had already performed in some short flicks beforehand. She performed until 1999 after making over 200 movies, being 1981 “Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle” her most famous one.

Apart from her work on camera she is also a theater performer, being her best known act “Public Cervix Announcement” where 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” and has toured around the world for 17 years now with many different one-woman shows.

But what stands out more about her, though, is not her porn career but all the things she has achieved off camera. in 1986 she received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts and earned a degree in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco in 1992. Before that, in 1991, she created the “Sluts and Goddesses” workshop, which was key for her 1992 production “The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps” in what was a preview of what was coming next.

Her publications about theater history, women’s studies and film studies are studied in courses in many universities. Her work has always been about sexuality with a political, spiritual and artistic bent. In December 2005 she committed to do seven years of art projects about love with her wife and art collaborator Beth Stephens. They call this their “Love Art Laboratory” and they even got married in Canada in 2007 as part of the project.

The two of them have been exploring their ecosexuality since they married the Earth and took it as their lover in a ceremony presided by Guillermo Gomez-Pena in 2008. They also coined the term field Sexecology, which explores the places where sexology and ecology meet, that even took them to do a theater piece “Dirty Sexecology – 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth”.

There’s no doubt that Annie’s life has been totally dedicated to sex and has helped the world become a better place, encouraging female rights and a further exploration of human sexuality.



Hair: Red
Measurements: 105-61-96 (36E-24-38)
Birth date: 23 July, 1954
Videos: 7