Asa Akira

Asa Akira was born in Manhattan, New York. She is the only child of her parents, both of whom are Japanese. When she turned 9, her family relocated to Tokyo, Japan, where they stayed until she was 13, before moving back to New York and settling in Clinton Hill. She has described her upbringing as a normal one with the family speaking Japanese at home. Her parents put an emphasis on healthy food, and she was never allowed to have any junk food while she was growing up. She began her working life as a teenager with a job at a bookstore.

Since her grandfather spent 45 years serving as a Japanese diplomat, Asa was invited to attend the United Nations International School in New York. However, she was not allowed to return for her sophomore year due to low grades. She finished her school career at City-As-School, a public school in the West Village of Manhattan, for her senior year and chose not to pursue any higher education.

At the age of 19, she began working as a dominatrix. She also started working as a stripper and was featured as a regular on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show.

Gina Lynn met Asa and, impressed with her looks, offered her work in her first adult film. She agreed and dove headlong into her brand-new profession. She worked in both straight and lesbian scenes, with her girl/girl work mostly being with Gina. She then signed with Vouyer Media before going freelance six months later. She received many award nominations in her early days and went on to co-host the 30th Annual AVN Awards, where she became the most awarded person of the night. In 2013 it was announced that Asa had signed an exclusive contract with Wicked Pictures.

That night’s haul included the AVN Award for Female Performer of the Year, and in the same year she made her directorial debut with Elegant Angel’s Gangbanged 6. The awards kept coming after her move to Wicked: XBIZ named her Best Supporting Actress for DNA in 2017, and in 2018 AVN crowned her Mainstream Star of the Year.

Asa’s fame has reached well beyond adult films. She wrote a memoir, Insatiable: Porn – A Love Story, published in 2014, followed by a second book, Dirty Thirty, in 2016. In 2017 she appeared as herself in a live-action cutaway on Family Guy – a cameo that won her AVN’s Mainstream Venture of the Year award – and she has hosted the Pornhub Awards. After a career that began in 2006, she stepped away from performing in 2023.