Christy Canyon was born on the 17th of June 1996 in Hunting Hospital, Pasadena, California. Although many details of her early life are scarce as she rarely speaks about them in interviews or otherwise (including her autobiography) it is known that her father was Armenian-American and her mother was Italian-American which gave Christy her unique looks, along with her sister being the writer Carla Sinclair (who also appeared in the adult industry in 1996, when she was featured in Playboy in an article about the growing market, at the time, of pornography on the internet). She was expelled from Providence High School (Burbank, CA) before graduating from North Hollywood High. It is known that before (and possibly during her time appearing in films) her fame was attained in the porn industry she obtained a degree in marketing (specialising in merchandise). At the age of 18, in the year 1984, she appeared in her first adult movie ('The Night of Loving Dangerously') after being spotted on the street by producer Greg Rome (behind films such as 'I Dream Of Ginger' and 'Titty Titty Bang Bang'), by the end of that year she had performed in over ten more, appearing in well known titles such as 'Swedish Erotica 57' and the first of the 'Between My Breasts' series.
This first run of exposure granted Christy a huge amount of popularity from the beginning of her adult career and from then she has appeared in approximately 205 titles (although unlike many other stars of the time, such as Seka, Canyon never directed any movies of her own). Her rising star was only matched by that of the infamous Traci Lords, who entered the business at roughly the same time as her, and the two were quickly reaching the selling status of the legendary Ginger Lynn (whom Canyon appeared in many movies with throughout her career) but by 1987 the scandal regarding Traci Lords' age had broke and she had left the industry (along with leaving a far amount of destruction behind her) and Christy was working her way into the #1 spot for selling power in the adult movie industry.
Christy first retired in the early 1985 (although the number of releases she was in during this time do not reflect this due to the sheer volume of performances that she had recorded that continued to be used after she left). She came back with her own label, Cayon Video, in late 1989 and produced titles such as 'Coming Of Christy' and 'Holly Does Hollywood 4'. Around the end of 1990, Christy decided to return to Vivid Entertainment (also known as Vivid Video), despite her successful sales with the Canyon Video series. With Vivid she appeared in the aptly titled 'Comeback' released in 1995 as well as performing alongside more modern stars in titles such as 'Deep Inside Jenna Jameson'. Canyon's second stint of performing in the industry lasted from 1989 to late 1992, after which she got married for the first time to Tom Sinopoli (a marriage which lasted less than a year, a total of five weeks is all it took until Christy divorced him). By the mid 1990's she was an extremely sucessful exotic dancer and became married for a second time after finally retiring from appearing in adult videos, to Adam Film World editor Jeremy Stone, this time the relationship lasted 3 years before they divorced and Christy continued dancing until 2001 and it was rumoured in her later days of that career that she was earning over half a million dollars a year from it, mainly due to her popularity among those watching which was gained from porn.
Throughout her illustrious career, Christy Canyon gained a huge amount of fans not only from her performances but also from aspects of her persona and physique which made her extremely unique when compared to other girls who performed in the adult industry at the time, these included:
Straight from her debut, Christy was in high demand with fans and producers alike and not one of her films failed to dissapoint sales targets set by production companies. Despite this, her 200-strong portfolio of appearances is extremely hard to sift through for some fans who frequently list her most notable performances in a certain number of movies as the must-haves for any die hard fan of Christy Canyon. Evidently some of her best selling titles were her two comeback videos, although these do not account for the majority of her sales and many of her bestsellers came in the middle of her stints during pornography.
After Christy retired from both movies (in 1997) and dancing (in 2001) she has continued to live a comfortable lifestyle funded by her extremely successful career, although she has not completely backed out of the industry that created her in the first place. After marrying a childhood friend known only as Grant in 2003, her third marriage, she wrote her autobiography 'Lights, Camera, Sex' which explored her off-screen passion for co-stars, secrets about her relationships with hollywood movie actors such as Robin Williams along with talking about her life after the industry. She is also a successful radio host, co-presenting the 'Night Calls Radio' show on the Playboy Radio channel on Sirius since March 2006 with her previous co-star Ginger Lynn.
A large amount of Christy's time since leaving the industry is dedicated to maintaining her official website at ChristyCanyon.com, the site contains many of her photoshoots and scenes from the videos that made her famous available for download along with auctions, contests, occasional webcam shows and a frequently updated diary informing members on what Christy is doing throughout the year. She also runs a business of selling personal items (such as clothing, lingerie, sex toys and more) through the auction website eBay.com, these are usually bought by avid fans and can be purchased autographed although this usually can cause bidding to go higher than one would normally expect to pay.
Other than her official website there is only a small number of pages that offer any content regarding Christy, this is very much to do with the time period that she was active in porn and although some of the videos that she appeared in back then have been remastered and issued on DVD, only a small number of websites are able to license the content to allow downloads which has annoyed many fans who do not feel that her official site has enough videos for them to stay entertained. One site that does have a collection of videos from the time is Porn Star Classics although their content is limited by distributor and many of the producing companies involved with Christy do not license her videos or are not making them available on the internet in order to protect their brand.
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