#1 Sylvester Stallone
Stallone didn't always look like he does (why does 'Marshmallow Man' spring to mind?). No, he used to be an 'Italian Stallion,' which, funny enough, is the title of the re-release of the 1970 softcore porn flick he was paid $200 to be in - previously known by the hilariously dated title, The Party at Kitty and Stud's. Embarrassingly for Stallone, the movie was re-released to cash in on the fame he found after the Rocky and Rambo movies. We're sure Stallone has gotten over it all and frankly he probably acts less woodenly in Italian Stallion than he does in the rest of his movies.
#2 Cameron Diaz
Cameron: she's a fun girl, ditzy, likes to surf, likes to joke around, game for getting into fetish lingerie and fish nets and making a soft porn solo movie. Right? Right. It seems pre-box office fame Cameron (plus perm) starred in an outside sex tape sporting a haircut more akin to that which she had in Being John Malkovich than in Something About Mary. She's since gone on to bigger and better things, and has spent a good number of years attempting to block the distribution of her old skin flick. She can still be found topless on the internet, of course, though these days it's on the beach - and she didn't get paid for the photos.
#3 Matt LeBlanc
If there ever was a natural porn star name it's Matt LeBlanc. By the last series of Friends, LeBlanc was being paid $1 million dollars per episode to convincingly portray sub-standard actor Joey Tribbiani. But before he was a zeitgeist-defining caricature Matt 'starred' in The Red Shoe Diaries, a mid-90s softcore porn series that introduced a whole generation of adolescent boys without personal computers to the warm and intriguing glow that is the world of sex.
LeBlanc mainly hunked about in said film looking awkward, un-entertaining yet smoldering, a talent that he later displayed in Friends spin-off series, Joey, for two whole seasons.
#4 David Duchovny
Maybe we should start thinking of The Red Shoe Diaries as a Mickey Mouse Club for fledgling 1990s TV icons. Like Joey (sorry - Matt), David appeared in an episode of the soft porn series before his career took off. Then he went off to fight aliens and later to play a sex addict in Californication, only to have to check himself into rehab for treatment for his real life sex addiction in 2008.
#5 Perrey Reeves
Yet another Red Shoe Diaries graduate! Only this time it's a she! Ivy League educated, New Hampshire-bred good girl Perrey was in 'The Last Motel' episode in 1994, wherein she managed to retain her preppy upstate look while bouncing about topless and regurgitating the kind of dialogue found in a 3rd grade drama piece, to the accompaniment of incessant porn-saxophone. Perrey now plays Ari Gold's wife in Entourage, in which she has also stripped off. Freakishly, she appears not to have aged in the decade between the two naked appearances. Mysterious.
#6 Arnold Schwarzenegger
Take a moment to remember that this man is in charge of an entire state. Before Arnie started his career in politics, he was best known as the Terminator, and before that he was hardly known at all as the Austrian winner of Mr Olympia 1970. During his early reign, Arnie posed for several pornographic shots for a gay magazine. Some claimed it wasn't porn, that it was for Robert Mapplethorpe, who was an artist. We cry nonsense! The big man knew what he was getting into... unlike the time he inadvertently had footage of him pumping steel spliced into a gay porn movie by a 'friend' of his. When Arnie found out, he was reputedly furious, and the friend presumably lavishly crapped his pants and got the first available flight to the Yukon.
#7 Helen Mirren
OK, so it's not technically "porn" - well, actually it probably is - but few people know that the high class English MILF that is Helen Mirren started her career doing movies which certainly seemed to have very little budget for a costume department. Starring in the '70s controversy-cow, Caligula, Helen spent most of her scenes prancing around without clothing and engaging in varying levels of simulated coitus. The original spent more time being edited and cut by film boards than almost any other movie of the age, and after having scenes directly depicting fellatio taken out, was finally released to a presumably less expectant audience...
#8 Sasha Grey
Bucking the trend, Sasha Grey isn't coy about her past as a pornographic model and actress. It's no secret that Sasha was a porn star; she was already pretty famous for it when Steven Soderbergh cast her in his movie, The Girlfriend Experience. Since then she has been in other movies as well as appearing in Entourage alongside fellow erotica graduate Perrey Reeves. She has also expanded into fashion modeling and music with her industrial noise band. The future looks rosy for Grey, as everyone likes it when a bad girl comes good.
#9 Jackie Chan
Kung pow! Not in the eyes Jackie! Chan played a lecherous rickshaw driver (no really) in the mid '70s porn 'classic' All in the Family, a Hong Kong based porno-comedy with a tenuous storyline. Chan has recently gone on the record claiming he has no regrets about the romp around in his birthday suit, as even Marlon Brando was comfortable exposing himself. Not sure the two are particularly comparable though: Brando starred in The Godfather, Chan peddled the shit out of Rush Hour...
#10 Marilyn Monroe
Brunette, ambitious but anonymous, Norma Jean bought a bottle of peroxide, renamed herself Marilyn and stripped off. And the rest is history.
The 1940s pictures she agreed to have taken of her frankly perfect naked form aren't quite in the same porn league as Paris Hilton or Pam Anderson, but it was a simpler age back then, and it certainly would have made grandpa blush when he wasn't shooting people in Europe. Apparently Norma Jean did like it hot.
