Pornstars With Pierced Nipples: The Names, Ranked by Popularity

Career

Stoya signed an exclusive three-year contract with Digital Playground in October 2007, reportedly the company’s first alt-porn contract performer, and swept the 2009 new-starlet awards at AVN, XBIZ and XRCO. She co-founded the pay-per-scene site TRENCHCOATx with Kayden Kross in March 2014 and zerospaces.com in 2018. Since 2019 she has co-written the How to Do It advice column for Slate, and has contributed to The New York Times, Vice, The Guardian and Esquire. Her essay collection Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn was published in 2018, and she won Best Actress at FEST Beograd for the Serbian science-fiction film Ederlezi Rising.

Signature: The category’s most complete pivot into writing: from a contract new-starlet sweep at twenty-two to a standing column at a mainstream American magazine.

Best known for

Studios

Beyond performing

• Co-founder, TRENCHCOATx (2014)
• Co-founder, zerospaces.com (2018)

Mainstream credits

• How to Do It column, Slate (2019–present)
• Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn (2018)
• Ederlezi Rising (2018)
• Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice and Esquire

Career

Rotten entered the industry in early 2012, at eighteen, as a fetish model and feature dancer. Two years later she became the first performer from the alt or tattooed end of the business to take AVN Female Performer of the Year, and in January 2014 she launched her own production company, Mental Beauty, Inc., directing for Girlfriends Films and Digital Playground. She released a product line with Pipedream in 2015, ran a tattoo shop between 2017 and 2018 and retired from performing in 2020. She appeared in The Weeknd’s Kiss Land video in 2013.

Signature: Proof that the category’s breakout window is not only for the girl-next-door marketing lane — she won the industry’s top female title on a heavily tattooed, explicitly alt persona.

Studios

Beyond performing

• Founder, Mental Beauty, Inc. (2014)
• Directing for Girlfriends Films and Digital Playground
• Pipedream product line (2015)
• Tattoo shop (2017–2018)

Mainstream credits

• The Weeknd — Kiss Land video (2013)

Career

Haze worked a contained nine-year career, 2009 to 2018, and drew recognition from an unusually wide spread of bodies for this list — XRCO, AVN, TLA’s Raw Awards, Penthouse and, in 2016, the Inked Awards, a ceremony built specifically around tattooed performers. Wikidata records five of those seven credits without specifying the exact category, which is disclosed rather than guessed at here.

Signature: The broadest spread of award bodies recognising any performer on this list — five different organisations across five years.

Career

Joanna Angel, born Joanna Mostov in Brooklyn, co-founded BurningAngel.com with Mitch Fontaine in April 2002 while still a college student, building the site into what is widely credited as the company that made alt-porn commercially viable rather than a niche curiosity. She works as actress, director, writer and producer for her own label, and was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2016, confirmed on AVN’s own winners list, and the NightMoves Hall of Fame. A widely repeated claim — carried on her own Wikipedia biography — that she was also inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2016 does not appear anywhere on Wikipedia’s own curated list of XRCO Hall of Fame members, and the equivalent Wikidata statement carries no reference at all; it is not scored here.

Signature: Started a studio at nineteen with no outside backing and turned an entire aesthetic subculture into a durable, self-owned production company.

Studios

Beyond performing

• Co-founder, Burning Angel (2002)
• JoannaAngel.com

Career

Rain debuted in 2012 and built a decade-plus career anchored by the single strongest competitive award any performer in this roster holds: XBIZ Female Performer of the Year, the ceremony’s top annual title, in 2018. That sits alongside two further XBIZ scene wins in 2016 and 2019 and a fourth in 2024, a six-year span of competitive recognition that is unusually sustained for the category. She maintains an active, large social-media following (933,000+ on Twitter/X, 74,900 YouTube subscribers) alongside her studio work.

Signature: The only performer in this ranking to hold a top-tier annual performer-of-the-year title from a major American award body.

Best known for

Studios

Beyond performing

• YouTube channel with a five-figure subscriber base

Career

Ella Hughes began a law degree at Southampton Solent University before leaving to support herself financially, moving through webcam modelling and adult-magazine work (Escort, Razzle) into film from 2015 at age twenty. The BBC covered that transition directly in a BBC Three piece, "I quit my law degree to become a porn star," and gave her further mainstream coverage in a BBC feature on the industry, "A Career in Porn." She also appeared in a 2016 episode of Game of Thrones. Her award record runs from two UK Adult Production (UKAP) titles in 2015–16 through XBIZ Foreign Female Performer of the Year and XBIZ Europa International Crossover Star in 2019 to two AVN wins: Best Foreign-Shot Group Sex Scene for Double Dare in 2020 (with Jia Lissa and Jason Luv) and Best International Anal Sex Scene for Scandalous — Scene 1 in 2025 (with Xander Corvus) — the exact category name and co-stars confirmed directly against AVN’s own winners-announcement articles for both years; the AVN ceremony’s own Wikipedia summary pages do not itemise this category, but AVN’s own press releases do.

Signature: A decade-long career bookended by wins from both AVN and XBIZ, with BBC coverage of the law-degree-to-film transition that gives this record more independent, mainstream sourcing than most others on this list.

Best known for

Studios

Mainstream credits

• Game of Thrones (2016 episode)

Career

Born Christine Mackinday, and given by English Wikipedia as born in 1991 or 1992 with a working period of 2011 to 2014 — a gap that guarantees a debut at eighteen or over on the year arithmetic alone. In the 2014 season, aged twenty-one or twenty-two, she took XBIZ Best New Starlet and AVN’s fan-voted Most Promising New Starlet, having launched her own site the year before. She left performing in 2014 and confirmed retirement publicly in April 2015. In 2016 she launched a clothing line with Pornhub to raise money for survivors of domestic violence. She was the victim of a violent assault by a former partner in August 2014; he was convicted of sexual assault and kidnapping and sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after thirty-six years.

Signature: Two newcomer titles in a single season three years after a verified adult debut, and — unusually for a career this short — a substantial second act built around a cause rather than a brand.

Beyond performing

• Official site launched with Puba (April 2013)
• Fleshlight signature product line
• Clothing line with Pornhub raising funds for domestic-violence survivors (2016)

Career

Aaron Thompson entered the industry in 2013 through a scene for Burning Angel, the alt-porn studio run by Joanna Angel, whom he married in 2016 and who gave him his stage name. He built his career largely within alt-porn and became a two-time AVN Male Performer of the Year, having already taken the XBIZ and XRCO equivalents — making him one of the very few to hold the top honour from all three American bodies. Outside the industry he is a musician, signing his project Empty Streets to Cleopatra Records in 2021.

Signature: Holds Male Performer of the Year from AVN, XBIZ and XRCO — a sweep almost nobody in the category has completed.

Studios

Beyond performing

• Empty Streets (music project)

Career

Valentien debuted in 2007 and built a decade-long career capped by AVN Best Actress in 2017 — one of the award show’s most competitive individual acting categories — alongside a Best Supporting Actress win the year before. NightMoves’ editors gave her their Best Ink award in 2015, the same tattoo-specific category Bonnie Rotten and Joanna Angel also hold, direct confirmation of documented tattoo work rather than an inference from photography.

Signature: One of only two performers on this list to hold a top individual AVN acting win (Best Actress) rather than a niche or scene-specific category.

Beyond performing

• Personal site, shopkleio.com

Career

Born Jake Miller in the San Fernando Valley itself, Buck Angel began his gender transition in 1990 and entered adult film in 2004, becoming the first trans man featured in an all-male production by a major gay studio with Titan Media’s Cirque Noir in 2005. In 2007 he became the only trans man to win AVN’s Transsexual Performer of the Year. He built his own label, Buck Angel Entertainment, rather than working exclusively inside someone else’s system, and from around 2012 shifted his public work toward sex education, using the trademark phrase "the man with a pussy."

Signature: A San Fernando Valley native who took the Valley’s studio model and rebuilt it around his own name and his own niche, years before "personal brand" was standard industry vocabulary.

Best known for

Studios

Beyond performing

• Founder, Buck Angel Entertainment
• Sex-education and public-speaking practice from c. 2012

Mainstream credits

• Honorary award, Tel Aviv Film Festival (2016)

Career

Born Lyubov Aleksandrovna Bushueva, Lola Taylor worked as a librarian and a massage therapist before entering the industry, which she described publicly as a route to self-realisation. She authored a book about her experience in 2017, established an escort-service venture in 2020, and announced her intention to leave the industry in 2023.

Signature: One of very few performers in any market to publish a first-person account of the work while still doing it, and then act on her own conclusions.

Beyond performing

• Published book on her industry experience (2017)
• Escort-service venture (2020)

Mainstream credits

• Television appearance on Zvanyy Uzhyn (2015)

Career

Born Amanda Hardy in Armstrong, British Columbia, Stylez worked as a stripper and webcam model in Vancouver before debuting in 2001. She performed under an exclusive contract with Jill Kelly Productions and briefly married the company’s CEO, Bob Friedland, in 2002–2003. She retired from performing around 2016, was inducted into the Urban X Hall of Fame in 2011 and the AVN Hall of Fame in 2016, and died in November 2017 at thirty-five; the cause was not publicly disclosed.

Signature: Hall of Fame recognition from two separate bodies five years apart — a rare double for a career that ran fifteen years and ended within a year of her death.

Best known for

Studios

Career

Pierce worked as a certified personal trainer and martial arts instructor for sixteen years before entering adult film around 2005, debuting in Gothsend 4. His award record across AVN, XBIZ, XRCO and NightMoves totals six wins and thirty-seven nominations, including the 2009 NightMoves Award for Best Male Performer and the 2016 XRCO Award for Best Actor for Magic Mike XXXL: A Hardcore Parody. Wikipedia’s own AVN Hall of Fame list page additionally credits him with a 2022 induction; that page itself flags the entry "citation needed," so it is treated here as a real but not independently confirmed addition. In May 2008 he co-hosted Playboy Radio’s "The Friday Night Threeway" alongside performer Kylie Ireland.

Signature: Sixteen years of documented, certified training work before the camera — the longest pre-industry fitness career of anyone in this field — backed by a real, multi-body award record once he was in front of it.

Best known for

Beyond performing

• Certified personal trainer and martial arts instructor (pre-2005, 16 years)

Mainstream credits

• Co-host, Playboy Radio’s "The Friday Night Threeway" (May 2008)