Lisa Ann has dipped in and out of porn since the nineties, and she made a mark on pop culture. Over a decade after she rocketed to fame playing the title role in Hustler’s Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?—and a year after her most recent retirement (which she swears is her last)—she’s still Pornhub’s eleventh most-searched-for pornstar worldwide. This week, she told LadBible’s Dominic Smithers about the evolution she’s witnessed in adult entertainment over her many years—and nearly as many retirements and comebacks.

“Being a porn star in the nineties was very different than it is now,” she said. “The girls were so valued. There weren’t a lot who wanted to do this for a living, so [filmmakers] wanted to treat the ones who did so well.”

As a contracted model in the nineties, Ann reported, she was pampered and catered to—literally. “It was like being on a regular movie set; they would call you the day before to ask you what you wanted to eat,” said Ann. “And they made sure you only worked with guys you wanted to work with.” In the nineties, she recalled, “We always met the guy beforehand. You would usually go for coffee or lunch and see if there was any chemistry, and if you didn’t then the studio would get someone else.”

The pace of shooting was much more relaxed in the days of VHS, Ann continued. “In my first years in the industry we only shot one movie a month, and even then I only shot 4/5 days a month,” she told LadBible. 

But as technology changed, she said, so did the industry. “In the early 2000s, it became aggressive…Studios were shooting thirty to fifty scenes a week,” she remembered. “Companies are doing things that weren’t legal when we were only distributing by VHS; it wasn’t legal in many states to have a girl choked or hit.” 

Ann said she was never interested in doing the more violent porn that became popular early in the new millennium. “I don’t want to do anything violent. I didn’t want to be choked, smacked or spat on. When a company would call me for a gig, I would look at the stuff they were producing and reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, I don’t do this and that,’ and they would tell me that I wasn’t a good fit.”

By the mid aughts, she’d started to grow weary of the changes she was seeing in the industry. And, she said, she was aging out of mainstream productions, anyway. “When I got into the business, there really weren’t any older women in porn. There were no girls shooting in their thirties,” she said. 

But, with the advent of the MILF niche, she saw her career options open back up. “It was like stepping back into the nineties again because it was campier, it was happier, it was fun again. The MILF never had violence struck on her, she was always the aggressor, she was always the lead of the scene.”

Then, in 2008, she landed the role of Serra Paylin in Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?, and her career got its second (or third?) wind. ”I was super lucky to get the Sarah Palin opportunity when all of that exploded at the same time,” she said. “When I was just starting to get afraid of being in the business because it was getting violent, I was like ‘Oh, I’ve found this safe space again and I can hold on for just a little bit longer and I can enjoy it again.’” 

Lisa Ann retired from porn in 2014, but returned in 2018 to do two VR scenes with WetVR, she said, “Because I didn’t want my career to be time-stamped by technology, and I hadn’t tried any VR scenes yet.”

But now, she said, she’s finally fully retired from adult film. “I’ve outgrown it,” she told LadBible. “I’ve loved it for everything it’s done for me and [I’m] still so happy to be invited to events and still be Lisa Ann, but at the same time it’s grown to be something different.” 

Ann is now focusing on her career as a Sirius XM sports radio host and podcaster.