{"id":4527,"date":"2026-10-06T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.camsoda.com\/blog\/?p=4527"},"modified":"2026-11-06T11:47:39","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:47:39","slug":"70s-pornstars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camsoda.com\/blog\/70s-pornstars\/","title":{"rendered":"70s Pornstars: 9 Golden Age Stars and What They Did Next"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best-known 70s pornstars are Georgina Spelvin, Marilyn Chambers, Gloria Leonard, Candida Royalle and Annie Sprinkle. They became famous in the \u201cgolden age\u201d of adult film, when features like Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones played in ordinary movie theaters, and all five are in the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame. Below are nine performers of the 1970s, each with a birth date, active years, signature films, awards and what they did next, all from public sources.<\/p>\n

This page is part of our guide to the best pornstars of every era<\/a>. The decade after this one, when home video took over, has its own list of 80s pornstars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How we chose these 1970s pornstars<\/h2>\n

We did not rank anyone on looks or on scenes. Every name below had to meet four criteria:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A 1970s career.<\/strong> The performer\u2019s debut and best-known work date from the 1970s. Stars whose careers peaked in the 1980s are on the 80s list instead.<\/li>\n
  2. Recognition.<\/strong> A place in the AVN Hall of Fame or the XRCO Hall of Fame, or Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) awards, the industry prize of the decade. Our one entry from outside the US is judged on her national career, since the American halls rarely reach abroad.<\/li>\n
  3. Age on record.<\/strong> A published birth date showing the performer was an adult for every credit. Several well-known names are missing for that reason alone: no birth date has been published for them, or only an approximate year.<\/li>\n
  4. A clean public record.<\/strong> We left out anyone with credits from before age 18, a disputed age or serious misconduct allegations, and anyone whose story is mainly one of coercion they later described.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The list runs in order of debut: four stars of the early 1970s, four who arrived in 1975, then one from Britain. Every fact comes from the sources listed at the end of this page.<\/p>\n

    What made the 1970s the golden age<\/h2>\n

    The period known as the Golden Age of Porn, or \u201cporno chic,\u201d ran from about 1969 to 1984. For a few years, feature-length adult films with plots, credits and reviews were shown in regular theaters and discussed in mainstream newspapers. Three 1972 and 1973 releases started it: Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones.<\/p>\n

    The decade was also a legal fight. On June 21, 1973, the Supreme Court decided Miller v. California<\/a>, which set the three-part test still used for obscenity, judged by contemporary community standards; one part asks whether a work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Prosecutions followed. Actor Harry Reems was convicted in 1976 for appearing in Deep Throat before the conviction was overturned in 1977, and Georgina Spelvin was charged in 1974 over The Devil in Miss Jones, with the charges dropped in 1977.<\/p>\n

    \"Timeline
    Sources: Miller v. California (Cornell LII) and the performer and film histories listed at the end of the article.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Deep Throat is the decade\u2019s most famous title, but its star is not on this list. Linda Lovelace later wrote in her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, that her husband at the time had coerced her into the film, and she repeated that account before the 1986 Attorney General\u2019s Commission on Pornography. Her story belongs to the history of consent in the industry, not to a list of favorites.<\/p>\n

    70s pornstars at a glance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    #<\/th>\nStage name<\/th>\nBorn<\/th>\nActive years<\/th>\nSignature 1970s film<\/th>\nHall of Fame<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
    1<\/td>\nGeorgina Spelvin<\/td>\n1936<\/td>\n1957\u20131982<\/td>\nThe Devil in Miss Jones (1973)<\/td>\nAVN; XRCO 1985<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    2<\/td>\nMarilyn Chambers<\/td>\n1952<\/td>\n1972\u20132008<\/td>\nBehind the Green Door (1972)<\/td>\nAVN; XRCO 1985<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    3<\/td>\nDarby Lloyd Rains<\/td>\n1947<\/td>\n1970\u20131981<\/td>\nThe Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974)<\/td>\nXRCO (film pioneer)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    4<\/td>\nGloria Leonard<\/td>\n1940<\/td>\n1974\u20131984<\/td>\nThe Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976)<\/td>\nAVN; XRCO 1989<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    5<\/td>\nCandida Royalle<\/td>\n1950<\/td>\n1975\u20131980 (performer)<\/td>\nBlue Magic (1980, also writer)<\/td>\nAVN; XRCO 1998<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    6<\/td>\nAnnie Sprinkle<\/td>\n1954<\/td>\n1975 onward<\/td>\nDeep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981)<\/td>\nAVN 1999; XRCO 1999<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    7<\/td>\nAbigail Clayton<\/td>\n1948<\/td>\n1975\u20131980<\/td>\nFemmes de Sade (1976)<\/td>\nXRCO 2008<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    8<\/td>\nSamantha Fox<\/td>\n1950<\/td>\n1975\u20131984<\/td>\nHere Comes the Bride (1977)<\/td>\nAVN 2002<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    9<\/td>\nFiona Richmond<\/td>\n1945<\/td>\n1970\u20131983<\/td>\nExpos\u00e9 (1976)<\/td>\nNone (UK career)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    Stars of the early 1970s<\/h2>\n

    1. Georgina Spelvin<\/h3>\n

    \"Georgina<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> March 1, 1936 (Houston, Texas, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1957\u20131982<\/p>\n

    Georgina Spelvin came to adult film from Broadway. She danced in the chorus of The Pajama Game and was featured in productions of Cabaret, Guys and Dolls and Sweet Charity, then worked as a choreographer, director and lighting technician. Actor Marc Stevens introduced her to director Gerard Damiano, and her lead role in The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) made her one of the best-known names in the business. She took her stage name from George Spelvin, the pseudonym stage actors traditionally used for a second role.<\/p>\n

    She appeared in more than 70 adult films and won six AFAA awards between 1976 and 1981, including Best Actress in 1977 and 1981, before retiring in 1982. Afterward she had cameos in Police Academy (1984) and Police Academy 3, learned desktop publishing and worked for the Los Angeles Times until 2004. She published her autobiography, The Devil Made Me Do It, in 2008 and appeared in Massive Attack\u2019s \u201cParadise Circus\u201d video in 2009. She received the XRCO and Free Speech Coalition Lifetime Achievement awards in 1991 and is in both the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame.<\/p>\n

    2. Marilyn Chambers<\/h3>\n

    \"Marilyn<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> April 22, 1952 (Providence, Rhode Island, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1972\u20132008<\/p>\n

    Marilyn Chambers was a working model, best known as the face on the Ivory Snow box, when she answered a 1972 casting call in the San Francisco Chronicle that turned out to be for Behind the Green Door. She agreed on her own terms: a large fee, 10 percent of the gross, and disease testing for every actor. The film, made by Artie and Jim Mitchell, made her a star almost overnight, and Resurrection of Eve followed in 1973.<\/p>\n

    She worked hard to cross over. She wrote an autobiography, My Story, in 1975, had a charting disco single, \u201cBenihana,\u201d in 1976, and took the lead in David Cronenberg\u2019s horror film Rabid in 1977. Her return to adult film with Insatiable (1980) produced the top-selling adult video in the US from 1980 to 1982. AVN ranked her sixth among its Top 50 Porn Stars of All Time. She later ran for vice president on the Personal Choice Party ticket in 2004, received the XBIZ Lifetime Achievement award in 2008 and died in 2009.<\/p>\n

    3. Darby Lloyd Rains<\/h3>\n

    \"Darby<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> November 20, 1947 (New York, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1970\u20131981<\/p>\n

    Darby Lloyd Rains started in New York\u2019s silent 16mm loops and in early features by Gerard Damiano, such as Sex USA (1970), and had an uncredited bit as a stripper in The French Connection (1971). She became one of the most prolific actresses of the New York scene, with lead roles in Damiano\u2019s Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) and in Radley Metzger\u2019s The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974) and Naked Came the Stranger (1975).<\/p>\n

    Her screen career ran into the early 1980s; her last listed film is Street Girls of New York (1981). She then moved behind the camera, working on set and in production for other adult films, and later co-founded a talent agency in New York City. The XRCO Hall of Fame inducted her among its \u201cfilm pioneers,\u201d the category it created for the stars of the theatrical era.<\/p>\n

    4. Gloria Leonard<\/h3>\n

    \"Gloria<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> August 28, 1940 (The Bronx, New York, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1974\u20131984<\/p>\n

    Gloria Leonard worked at a Wall Street brokerage and in public relations, including copywriting for Elektra Records, before a casting agent sent her to an acting job that turned out to be an adult film. She began in 1974, when she was in her thirties, and made about 40 films. Her best-known role is in Radley Metzger\u2019s The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), a retelling of Shaw\u2019s Pygmalion, and she won the AFAA Best Actress award for Taboo, American Style.<\/p>\n

    Her bigger influence came off screen. In 1977 she became publisher of High Society magazine, a job she held for 14 years and ran hands-on, and she was among the first to use premium \u201c976\u201d phone numbers as a business. She co-founded Club 90, the first support group for adult film actresses, with Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera, debated anti-pornography feminists on college campuses in the 1980s and was elected president of the Free Speech Coalition in 1998. She is in the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame and died in 2014.<\/p>\n

    The class of 1975<\/h2>\n

    5. Candida Royalle<\/h3>\n
    \"Candida<\/figure>\n

    Born:<\/strong> October 15, 1950 (Brooklyn, New York, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1975\u20131980 as a performer; director and producer from 1984<\/p>\n

    Candida Royalle trained at the High School of Art and Design and Parsons School of Design, then moved to San Francisco and performed with the avant-garde theater troupe The Cockettes. She began acting in adult films in 1975 and made about 25 of them. Her last, Blue Magic (1980), was one she wrote herself. She later said she stopped performing partly because the films of the time gave no space to a woman\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

    In 1984 she co-founded Femme Productions to make adult films for women and couples, which counselors and therapists praised for showing sex in a realistic, healthy way. She wrote or co-directed 18 films there, received the Free Speech Coalition Lifetime Achievement Award as a director in 1997, wrote How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do (2004) and lectured at the Smithsonian Institution and the World Congress of Sexology. She died in 2015; her archive is now at Harvard\u2019s Schlesinger Library. She is in the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame.<\/p>\n

    6. Annie Sprinkle<\/h3>\n
    \"Annie<\/figure>\n

    Born:<\/strong> July 23, 1954 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1975 onward (adult film, then performance art and sex education)<\/p>\n

    Annie Sprinkle moved from Arizona to New York in the early 1970s and made her first adult film in 1975. She went on to appear in almost 200 films, from features and loops to B movies and documentaries. Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981), which she co-directed with Joseph W. Sarno, was the second-highest-grossing adult film of its year.<\/p>\n

    She turned her career into art and education. Her one-woman show Post Porn Modernist toured from 1989 to 1995, and in 1996 she earned a doctorate in human sexuality, becoming the first known porn star with a PhD. With her wife, artist Beth Stephens, she launched the \u201cecosex\u201d art movement, showed work at Documenta 14 in 2017, and in 2026 shared a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Pornfilmfestival Berlin. Harvard\u2019s Schlesinger Library holds her papers. She entered the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame in 1999.<\/p>\n

    7. Abigail Clayton<\/h3>\n

    \"Abigail<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> November 28, 1948 (New York City, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1975\u20131980<\/p>\n

    Abigail Clayton earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in fine arts from Stony Brook University in 1971 and moved to San Francisco, where she worked on the production side of adult and independent films as an assistant and editor for director Alex de Renzy. She moved in front of the camera in the mid-1970s. Femmes de Sade, filmed in 1975, later became the eighth film inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame, and she also starred in 7 Into Snowy and Sex World (both 1977).<\/p>\n

    She made only 15 original adult films, far fewer than most of her peers, and was one of the first adult stars to work in mainstream film, in Bye Bye Monkey (1978) with G\u00e9rard Depardieu and Marcello Mastroianni, the horror film Maniac (1980) and So Fine (1981). After leaving the industry she earned an MBA in marketing from New York University and joined the regular workforce. The XRCO Hall of Fame inducted her in 2008. She died in 2021.<\/p>\n

    8. Samantha Fox<\/h3>\n

    \"Samantha<\/p>\n

    Born:<\/strong> December 3, 1950 (New York City, US)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1975\u20131984<\/p>\n

    Samantha Fox, not to be confused with the British singer of the same name, studied art at Sarah Lawrence College and modeled for magazines before a production company recruited her for film. Her first feature, Here Comes the Bride (1977), stayed her favorite. From Bad Penny (1978) on she became a regular lead for director Chuck Vincent, and she made more than 100 films, in adult features and B movies alike.<\/p>\n

    She won the AFAA Best Actress award two years in a row, for Jack \u2019n Jill (1980) and This Lady Is a Tramp (1981), co-starred in The Devil in Miss Jones 2 (1982) and took the lead in Doris Wishman\u2019s horror film A Night to Dismember (1983). After retiring in the mid-1980s she acted in mainstream films such as Warrior Queen (1987), then studied physical therapy at Hunter College and worked as a fitness instructor. She entered the AVN Hall of Fame in 2002 and died in 2020.<\/p>\n

    Beyond the US<\/h2>\n

    9. Fiona Richmond<\/h3>\n

    Born:<\/strong> March 2, 1945 (Hilborough, Norfolk, England)
    \nActive years:<\/strong> 1970\u20131983<\/p>\n

    Fiona Richmond worked as an air stewardess and a Playboy Club croupier before auditioning in 1970 for Pyjama Tops, the West End\u2019s first nude stage production, at the Whitehall Theatre. She played in it until 1974, wrote a well-known column for Men Only magazine and gave sex advice on London\u2019s LBC radio. Her films were X-rated in British terms, the softcore sex films of the day, among them Expos\u00e9 (1976), Hardcore (1977) and Let\u2019s Get Laid (1977). She also hosted the first Electric Blue video in 1979.<\/p>\n

    She published a string of books, including Fiona (1976) and From Here to Virginity (1981), played the Queen of France in Mel Brooks\u2019s History of the World, Part I (1981) and retired from show business in 1983 to work in fashion and journalism. In the 2013 film The Look of Love she was played by Tamsin Egerton, and she criticized it for making the era look sleazier than it was. Our British pornstars<\/a> list covers Mary Millington and the stars who came after.<\/p>\n

    Other golden age names, and why some are missing<\/h2>\n

    Vanessa del Rio made her first film in 1974, but her 12-year career runs to 1986, so she is a main entry on our 80s pornstars<\/a> list, alongside Seka and Kay Parker. Several famous 1970s names are missing on purpose: Annette Haven, Serena and Desir\u00e9e West because no birth date has been published for them, and others because their age at the time, their early credits or their public record does not meet the criteria above. If a name you expected is not here, that is usually why.<\/p>\n

    What about the men of the 70s?<\/h2>\n

    Two men of this era stand out in both halls of fame. Harry Reems played in Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and became the first American actor prosecuted by the federal government just for appearing in a film; his 1976 conviction was overturned in 1977 and the charges dropped. Jamie Gillis, a Columbia University graduate, appeared in more than 470 films and won AFAA Best Actor awards for The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) and A Coming of Angels. Both entered the XRCO Hall of Fame in its first class, in 1985. For the men who followed, ranked on awards and career length, see our male pornstars<\/a> list.<\/p>\n

    How the 1970s were recognized: from AFAA awards to the halls of fame<\/h2>\n

    No result for this search explains how a 1970s performer earns the word \u201clegend,\u201d so here is how it worked. During the decade itself, the main prize was the Adult Film Association of America award: Georgina Spelvin, Gloria Leonard, Samantha Fox and Jamie Gillis all won it. AVN and XRCO did not exist yet. When they arrived in the mid-1980s, their halls of fame went back and honored the earlier era, both its people and its films.<\/p>\n