This is the cover story of the May issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition.
Gianna Dior remembers thinking she wasn’t someone who could make a living doing any kind of modeling.
“I didn’t think that I was model material,” Dior recalls. “I didn’t think it was like a realistic thing. … It’s a little bit different now—now that I have confidence.”
Different would be an understatement.
In less than four years Dior has gone from hustling between two jobs as a college student to becoming one of the top adult performers in the world—and she has eight AVN trophies to show for it.
The native of Andalusia, Alabama, a small town about two hours south of Auburn, in January became only the third woman in industry history to win the AVN Female Performer of the Year award after being crowned Best New Starlet, joining only Jenna Haze and Missy in the exclusive club.
The Spiegler Girl—who has the 2020 Best New Starlet title—on January 22nd also took home awards for Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene with Troy Francisco; Best Anal Sex Scene with Mick Blue; and Best Tag-Team Sex Scene for her throw-down with Rob Piper and Jax Slayher. All three of her scene honors came from her dramatic star vehicle Psychosexual, a Vixen Media Group production that was directed by Kayden Kross.
The unexpected triumphs on January 22nd turned the 39th edition of the AVN Awards into a historic evening for Dior, who only nine months earlier was worried she may not be able to walk again.
“I still have not fully comprehended that I won,” Dior says. “It’s been months and I still cannot grasp it. … I thought I had a very small chance but I did not think that I would even be close.
“You can see from my expression when I won—I thought I heard it wrong. I was like, ‘Are you sure? Did someone say my name wrong or something?’ It was definitely an overwhelming moment.”
Her agent Mark Spiegler, who has represented seven of the past nine Female Performer of the Year winners, has been booking Dior since the summer of 2018, when she was about six weeks into the business.
“Obviously, she’s come quite a long way,” Spiegler says. “When I first talked to her she was in Florida and she said she wanted to come out to California. She left on a Saturday at 3 a.m. and got to my apartment [in the San Fernando Valley] at 1 p.m. on Monday—she drove straight through.
“She has listened to everything and paid attention and she’s really smart, and that helps. This last year the most surprised person at the AVN Awards was Gianna. She’s done everything from anal to features to special projects. I think she also did the grunt work working her way up.”
Indeed, Dior at press time had almost 500 credits since her buzz-worthy debut in May 2018 in Miami with multiple outings for every major studio and website in adult.
AVN Hall of Fame director and studio owner, Jules Jordan, knows Dior’s performing prowess as well as anyone as she has racked up 23 credits for Jordan’s high-end gonzo label, doing five scenes alone for her 2019 star showcase Ultimate Fuck Toy: Gianna Dior.
“Gianna is a gorgeous beauty with mainstream model looks and an incredible sexual appetite,” Jordan tells AVN. “She is definitely one of my top favs of all time to work with, and is a top seller for our fans. She has been very deserving of all her accolades and I’m sure lots more to come.”
One of Dior’s recurring scene partners when she steps in front of Jordan’s camera is none other than Dredd. The native New Yorker, who is in his eighth year shooting porn full time—in two stints—calls Dior “one of the most fierce performers I have worked with.”
“Absolutely no doubt about it,” Dredd tells AVN, adding that from their first scene together in Ultimate Fuck Toy that she was “more than ready for the task.”
“And every other time we worked together she only got better and better. She is quite exceptional.”
The 24-year-old star, who will celebrate her birthday May 12, says the past four years since she decided to get into adult on a whim “feels like 10 years.”
She waited tables at a sushi restaurant and worked as a receptionist for an eye doctor while studying Psychology at Auburn University when she matched with a guy on Tinder who was an adult producer. Even though porn was something she hadn’t considered, she accepted his invitation to come to Miami to try a scene or two, paying her own way for the flight and hotel.
She took off work and skipped classes for a week, then stayed in south Florida for close to a month, doing about a dozen scenes for studios such as BangBros, Mofos and PropertySex.
Less than two months later she arrived in Porn Valley for the first time, joining the Spiegler Girls agency—and the rest is adult entertainment history.
“I feel like I’m like 40 years old, honestly, just because of what I’ve gone through and what I’ve experienced over the past four years,” Dior says half jokingly. “It’s like I’ve lived a hundred lives. Like I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do.
“I’m kind of at a standstill at this point where I’m like, ‘OK, what now?’ I already did everything I wanted to accomplish. And I didn’t know I was going to accomplish it this early so I’m like, fuck, what now? What’s my goal now? … I’m moving at a quicker pace than I expected. So that’s the looming question right now is ‘OK, what should I do next?”
Dior says with certainty she can’t continue with the pace she maintained before she got sick last year and was unable to move, let alone perform.
It was late March 2021, when Gianna couldn’t stand up or even use her hands and had to text by using the talk-to-text function on her phone.
It turned out her unexpected paralysis was due to a vitamin B12 deficiency. She had been feeling tired and rundown and it had begun to affect her work schedule when one day while walking through the JFK Airport in New York her legs felt tingly and she knew something was wrong. It was only after seeing a neurologist more than a week later that she was admitted to Northridge Hospital in suburban L.A., where she stayed for four days before going to a rehabilitation facility for most of April.
“That’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my whole entire life,” Dior says. “Like I could not move from the neck down, I could barely move my arms and legs. And around this time, April 11, this is when I started getting better.
“But I was in the physical therapy rehab and I lived there for three weeks. I was in physical therapy three times a day and occupational therapy where they made me use my hands. But it was terrifying.”
Dior turned that negative experience into some of the biggest positives of her life. First and foremost, Dior became closer to her family during the ordeal.
“My family came out in shifts to help me and be with me,” Gianna says. “But I was scared for my career for sure. I thought I was done working. I was like I can’t even walk, how am I gonna wear stripper heels and do like a striptease or something? I’m like there’s no way.
"So I didn’t know how to actually explain the situation to Spiegler because he hadn’t seen me. So I had my mom call Spiegler actually, since I was like, ‘I can’t do it. I have anxiety, he’s not gonna believe me.’
“And my mom called him and all he said is, ‘Is this as serious as I think it is?’ And she’s like, ‘Yes.’ And he was like, ‘Just get her better, don’t worry about work.’ And he told me, ‘Don’t worry about your career, I’m not gonna drop you. You’re not getting kicked out or anything.’ He was like, 'Just get better and we’ll figure it out from there.'
“So I worked my ass off and I walked out of that place.”
Dior says she lost a lot of weight when she was sick, getting down to 95 pounds. Today she’s back to 115 pounds on her 5-foot-5 frame.
The resilient performer points to her natural survival skills that helped her in the toughest moments, the same ones that she’s called upon to get her through other challenges in her life.
“I know exactly where I got it from and it was both my parents being in the military,” Gianna explains. “From a very young age I was very disciplined and had to take care of myself. I mean my parents were there if I needed help but I had to figure things out myself.
“If I wanted to go to a friend’s house, my parents weren’t going to take me. I had to figure out how to get there. Or if I wanted something I had to figure out how to get it. I would rake leaves and do chores and stuff to make money so I could buy a toy or something. From a young age I was kind of forced to take care of myself. It sucked while it was happening but I’m so glad my parents raised me that way. I wouldn’t be able to do the things that I do now if my parents didn’t do that.”
Dior tells AVN she’s always done things her own way. Knowing that, she says, makes the success she’s had that much more gratifying.
“I’m grateful for everything,” she says. “My health and my family are like the two biggest things. My fans would be the next thing. And for my career, for the opportunities I’ve been given, for Spiegler. The companies that have worked with me, the performers who have worked with me, AVN.
“I think being grateful is a huge part of being happy and successful, too. I wouldn’t realize how good I have it if I didn’t think about what I’m grateful for.”
Photography by @joce.james
