Pornographic films Grey made her
hardcore pornography debut shortly after her 18th birthday in 2006. She initially considered calling herself Anna Karina, Her surname either came from
Oscar Wilde's novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray or, alternatively, was inspired by how the
Kinsey scale grades homosexual and heterosexual attraction as a continuum, a "scale of grey". Less than six months after entering the adult industry, Grey was featured in the November 2006 edition of
Los Angeles magazine where she was flagged as a potential major star, perhaps the next
Jenna Jameson. In February 2007, Grey appeared on
The Tyra Banks Show and discussed teenagers working in the sex industry. There was speculation the show was heavily edited and had not included her defence of adult film as a career choice. The show was also criticized for editing the interview to increase its dramatic value. In 2008, she became the youngest woman ever to win the
AVN Female Performer of the Year Award In 2008 Grey announced that she would represent herself in the adult industry through her agency
L.A. Factory Girls. Grey also appeared in ''
Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge'', which won in 15 categories at the
26th AVN Awards ceremony in 2009, making it the most awarded film ever at the ceremony. Grey filmed her last adult film at age 21 in 2009 and announced her retirement from the industry on Facebook in April 2011.
A. O. Scott of
The New York Times described Grey's pornography career as "distinguished both by the extremity of what she is willing to do and an unusual degree of intellectual seriousness about doing it". Grey was the
G4tv host in a two-hour documentary on
Sexpo Australia for
Attack of the Show! in 2009. In 2011,
CNBC named Grey as one of the 12 most popular stars in adult films and noted that her mainstream roles had kept interest in her earlier adult film work high and that several companies continued to release compilations from her films.
The Guardian counted her as starring in 270 adult films. Grey directed the films
Birthday Party and
The Seduction (2009).
Modeling Grey was named
Penthouses Pet of the Month for July 2007 and was photographed by
fashion photographer
Terry Richardson. She was also profiled in the December 2008 issue of
Rolling Stone and appeared twice in
Playboy, in a December 2009 pictorial and as the cover feature in October 2010. Grey has modeled for various clients, including
Max Azria's line Manoukian,
American Apparel, and
Flaunt. Grey modeled for
Richard Kern as a part of
Vices anti-fashion layout and appeared in his book and in the three-part
VBS.tv program
Shot by Kern. Grey appeared in
Taschen's 25th anniversary reprint of Terry Richardson's book
Terryworld and in his
Wives, Wheels, Weapons, a companion book to
James Frey's
Bright Shiny Morning. She has modeled for artists
James Jean,
Zak Smith,
Dave Naz,
David Choe, and Frédéric Poincelet, who also created the artwork for her industrial music band
aTelecine's
...And Six Dark Hours Pass album. In May 2010 she interviewed artist
Terence Koh for
BlackBook. In 2010, Grey was one of four actors who appeared in
Julião Sarmento's video installation
Leporello and was featured in the
Richardson magazine A4.
Richard Phillips made a short film called
Sasha Grey in the
Chemosphere for the
Gagosian Gallery in 2011 and also portrayed her for the
Frieze Art Fair in 2013.
Hypocrite Design described Sasha Grey in the film as a "perpetually evolving figure". In an interview with
Allure in 2018, Grey said her look was "definitely punk-inspired, definitely the anti-aesthetic, and I've definitely grown out of that because I'm older".
Acting The Girlfriend Experience In director
Steven Soderbergh's film
The Girlfriend Experience, Grey played the lead role of Chelsea, an escort who is paid to act as her clients' girlfriend. Soderbergh cast Grey after reading her profile in
Los Angeles magazine. As Grey prepared for her role in
The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh asked her to watch
Jean-Luc Godard's films
Vivre sa vie and
Pierrot le Fou, both of which star
Anna Karina. Grey and Soderbergh also interviewed two escorts whom they took character traits and behaviors from.
Entertainment Weekly found Grey was "not so much a natural actress as a natural-born placid, affectless Barbie doll".
New York said the actors "appear to be improvising (badly)".
Violet Blue wrote that "Grey herself is as complex and layered and mesmerizing as a Soderbergh film itself—that's why Grey's fans cross all kinds of cultural and moral divides". On
Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 66% based on 138 reviews.
Other Grey appeared in a 2009 episode of ''
James Gunn's PG Porn'' with
James Gunn, made a cameo appearance in
Dick Rude's 2010 independent film
Quit, and starred in the 2009 Canadian low-budget black comedy/horror film
Smash Cut with
David Hess from
Odessa/Zed Filmworks. Grey played a fictionalized version of herself in the
seventh season of the
HBO series
Entourage as
Vincent Chase's new girlfriend in a multi-episode arc. The season has a 57% rating (13 fresh, 10 rotten) on Rotten Tomatoes. She then starred in the Indonesian film
Shrouded Corpse Bathing While Hip-Shaking, which premiered on April 28, 2011. She co-starred in the 2012 horror-thriller
Would You Rather, which was directed by
David Guy Levy, and which has a critics' consensus rating of 59% based on 22 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. A critic noted the similarity of her role as "unflinching in the wildest of circumstances, when vying for a hefty sum of cash at the expense of [her] health" to Grey's own career as an adult actor. She voiced the character Viola DeWynter in the 2011 video game
Saints Row: The Third and reprised the role again in 2015 for
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell. In 2013, in the documentary series
Durch die Nacht mit ...,
Mariya Ocher took Grey to nightlife venues in
Hamburg where Grey ignored the "women prohibited" barrier of the
Herbertstraße. In 2014 she starred with
Elijah Wood in
Open Windows, which was directed by
Nacho Vigalondo. Nikola Grozdanovic wrote that "all of
Open Windows is constructed in a way for all of the action to unfold through some kind of computer screen". The
Tomatometer critics' consensus for
Open Windows was 40% based on 40 reviews. Grey appeared in music videos for
The Smashing Pumpkins' 2007 song "
Superchrist", and for
The Roots' 2008 song "Birthday Girl". In 2011, she appeared in the music video for
Eminem's song "
Space Bound", which premiered on
Vevo, playing a girlfriend whom Eminem strangles before realizing that she is only a figment of his imagination.
Music In 2008, Grey began an
industrial music collaboration called aTelecine with Pablo St. Francis In 2010, aTelecine released its first album,
...And Six Dark Hours Pass, and followed it up with the first of three
A Cassette Tape Culture compilations.
Paul Maher Jr. compared Sasha Grey with
Cathy Ames in
John Steinbeck's novel
East of Eden, describing the ambient tracks of aTelecine as aural wrecking balls, stated that Grey's artistic temperament comes close to that of the
Marquis de Sade as "a proponent of freedom tethered to its furthest extremities, yet untethered by laws, morality or religion" and admired her courage and audaciousness. In July 2013, it was announced that Grey had left the band. In 2012, Grey covered
Nico for the
X-TG album
Desertshore. In 2014, Grey and
Jayceeoh produced "Heat of the Night", featuring Bella. In 2015,
psytrance band
Infected Mushroom featured Grey's vocals in their album
Converting Vegetarians II in the track "Fields of Grey". In 2016, Grey contributed to the
Death in Vegas album
Transmission. The former
Throbbing Gristle members
Chris & Cosey remixed "Consequences of Love", a
Transmission song performed and composed by Grey and
Fearless. In 2017,
Michael Mayer adapted the Chris & Cosey remix in his
DJ-Kicks album.
Vice described
Transmission as an "EBM-inspired romp through the darker edges of the sleazier clubs in the nightlife spectrum". In a cameo appearance,
DJ Harvey plays "Consequences of Love" in the rave party at the
Grand Palais scene of
Mission: Impossible – Fallout. In 2018, Death in Vegas published the single "Honey", with Grey as writer, singer, and film director of Drone Records' video for the song. In August 2018
PIG published "That's The Way (I Like It)", featuring Grey, and premiered it on the website
Pornhub. Since 2010, Grey has regularly performed as a DJ and has published some of her mixes on
SoundCloud. Grey said she uses
CDJs,
USB-sticks, and
SD cards when making her music.
Books Grey's
photo book Neü Sex was released on March 29, 2011.
BlackBook described it as "another right step in transforming herself into the multimedia artist she sees herself as" and the
Portland Mercury compared Grey's "distinct style" with the photography of
Cindy Sherman and
Terry Richardson. Her second book, an erotic novel titled
The Juliette Society, was released on May 9, 2013.
Karley Sciortino described the book as a "satirical, erotic novel that follows Catherine, a film student who enters a secret, elite sex society", and in an interview Grey stated she paid homage to novels like
The 120 Days of Sodom,
Thérèse the Philosopher, and Voltaire's
Candide. Alisande Fitzsimons wrote that
The Juliette Society contains references to classic erotic literature and film, and
Cosmopolitan UK called it "erotica with a difference". Grey described
The Juliette Society as somewhat autobiographical. The trilogy was translated into several languages, and in October 2019 the German translation of
The Mismade Girl was published by
Heyne Hardcore as
X.
Other ventures In 2020, Grey began hosting a show on
VENN called
Grey Area. Grey began streaming video game playthroughs on
Twitch in the first half of 2020. ==Personal life==