The AVN Awards are movie awards sponsored and presented by the American adult video industry trade magazine AVN (Adult Video News) to honor exceptional performance in various aspects of the creation and marketing of American pornographic movies. They are called the "Oscars of porn". The AVN Awards are divided into nearly 100 categories, some of which are analogous to industry awards offered in other film and video genres, and others that are specific to pornographic/erotic film and video.
AVN sponsored the first AVN Awards ceremony in February 1984. The award ceremony occurs in early January during the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Since 2008, the ceremony has aired in a form edited for time on Showtime, which is usually broadcast in a 90-minute timeslot.
Awards for gay adult video were a part of the AVN awards from the 1986 ceremony through the 1998 ceremony. The increasing number of categories made the show unwieldy and for the 1999 ceremony AVN Magazine began hosting the GayVN Awards, an annual adult movie award event for gay adult video.
Phoenix Marie (born September 21, 1981) is the stage name of an American hardcore pornstar and "Penthouse Pet" who now resides in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Inari Vachs (born September 2, 1974 in Michigan) is an American pornographic actress.
She entered the industry in November 1997 at age 23, and has since appeared in close to 380 films.
Her stage name refers to the Japanese god Inari, who is depicted in paintings as a woman with long, flowing hair, and to her favorite author Andrew Vachss. In 2000 she signed an exclusive contract with XXXGeneration Video, and became a music reporter for XXXGeneration magazine. In 2002, she began an 8-year hiatus from performing on camera.
In 2003 she established the production company IV Multimedia. As of 2005 she co-hosted Playboy TV’s Naughty Amateur Home Videos.
In 2010, Vachs returned to performing in Harder by skinworXXX.
Dana DeArmond (born June 16, 1979 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, USA) is a pornographic actress who entered the industry in 2005.
During her teen years, DeArmond was a figure skater; she was in the same skating club as Sunny Lane. DeArmond had worked as a street dancer at Disney World and as a stripper in Florida and California before doing bondage play on the Web and then hardcore movies.
She had gained popularity before her porn career, as an internet personality with over 300,000 friends on Myspace. She asserts on her MySpace profile that TheInternetsGirlfriend.com is her official website and that she is not affiliated with any other website.
She admits to having social anxiety saying "I made my life so I don’t have to come into contact with lots of people except for once or twice a year when I sign."
DeArmond has directed two documentary porn movies in which she helps young people whom she meets on the web break into the business, called Dana DeArmond Does the Internet and Dana DeArmond's Role Modeling. She has also guest lectured on the adult industry for classes at University of California, Irvine and University of California, Santa Barbara.
Allan Lake (born 13 November 1983 on the Isle of Wight) is a British disc jockey.
On the 22nd December 2011, Allan started a blog breaking down his inner most feelings, detailing his mistakes in life with the hope that the blog will help him break the "Cycle of self destruction" which he has states he has been in for the previous 2 years before recording his personal journey to rebuilding a better Allan Lake.
Allan Lake has been hosting radio for the last 11 years. He started his radio career at Isle of Wight Radio, working as the teaboy on the Saturday sports show and as producer for the station's veteran phone-in presenter Alex Dyke. This led to his own Saturday evening show, but he was let go by the station after broadcasting a controversial feature named "Bin Laden reads the Bible". After this, he moved to neighbouring station Power FM, before leaving the south coast for Hull to present Late Night Lake at Viking FM. He also had a less than 28 day stint on a station called '106.8 The Noise' which closed after a feature where listeners had to guess what the noise was had aired. Whilst working at Galaxy Manchester he made national headlines after comments he made about Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus.