She made her debut with a 1993 appearance in Andrew Blake’s “Hidden Obsessions” in which she shared the screen with Janine Lindemulder, her close friend who also was making her debut. The duo soon became a legendary act on the exotic dancing circuit as Blondage. Julia Ann went on to become a contract star for Vivid, Digital Playground and Wicked Pictures, the latter running into 2007.
And then she was gone. Well, not entirely, she quickly found work as a makeup artist, but as far as fans were concerned, there was very little Julia Ann coming their way. As she tells it, she was dating a civilian, discovering the joy of scuba diving and getting steady makeup gigs. But questions lingered, especially this one: Why won’t you perform?
“My problem is that I genuinely love being here, I really like the people,” Julia Ann said. “I’m comfortable here. It’s going to suck, because there’s going to be a day when it’s going to end, and I’ll do something else. But as it is, I’m trying to stay as long as I can.”
She’s doing a great job of it. Julia Ann is among a handful of superstars who have been able to extend their careers through their 30s and beyond. It doesn’t hurt that her resurgence comes at a time when MILF and cougar lines are all the rage.
Consider her box cover appearance on Mercenary Pictures’ “MILF Magnet,” 3rd Degree’s “Cougar Club” and Chris Streams’ “Dirty Rotten Mother Fuckers 2.”
They aren’t labels that she’s particularly fond of, though she’s willing to live with them.
‘I appreciate the fact that we’re not shying away from it,” she said, “but at the same time I wish that we had not marketed them the way we do.”
Today she’s performing a few times a month and continuing to do makeup on the other days. After so many years under contract, she is enjoying the freedom of a freelance performer. It doesn’t hurt that her reputation precedes her and she garners a little more respect than your typical gonzo newbie.
“I walked on set today and — they were being facetious, but with some hint of respect in it — when I walked up and they said, ‘Julia Ann is here, everybody bow to the queen,’” she said. “It was their way of having fun with me, and yet showing that they respect me. I don’t even ask for that, and it’s nice to know that all those people out there that you didn’t work with see you in a good light. You wouldn’t even know this because I’ve been in that little closet for so long.”
And she’s earned that respect with 15-plus years of service in the industry, a trophy shelf full of awards for both sex and acting, membership in both the AVN and Exotic Dancer halls of fame and a longtime host on Playboy TV’s popular “Naughty Amateur Home Videos.” As she said, “I’m a newbie that gets the respect of someone who’s not a newbie.”
And, in a way, she is a newbie. She’s never before had the opportunity to work with Lexington Steele, Sean Michaels and most of the guys who have come up in recent years. In recent months she’s had the opportunity to work for directors like Chris Streams, Mike Quasar and Dyanna Lauren, none of which would have happened were she still under contract.
Two obvious differences from her Wicked days are the shorter hours (gonzo shoots take significantly less time than notoriously long feature productions) and the disappearance of condoms. The sex itself, she said, hasn’t been all that different.
“I don’t know that gonzo is much dirtier than what I’ve done, with the exception of not using a condom,” she said. “I did anal and DP and interracial for Wicked. The exception is getting fucked at about 10,000 miles per hour — which I don’t find as hard or as dirty, I find it kind of boring — I’m not sure there’s been much of a difference. I think dirty is in the way you attack it, not necessarily how quickly or how hard you attack it. I’ve done dirty scenes, but they were dirty just because the energy was dirty. To me, that’s gritty sex. That’s the kind of sex that I want to have, that’s raw.”
