Sasha Grey

The 21-year-old porn star—who digs Sartre, records dour experimental music and stars in Oscar-winning Steven Soderbergh’s new film—makes it cool to masturbate again.

Although Sasha Grey’s turns in videos for the Roots (“Birthday Girl”) and Smashing Pumpkins (“Superchrist”) and a NSFW American Apparel ad are well within the range of traditional porn-star extracurriculars, not much else she does is. She’s one-half of challenging experimental-music duo Atelecine and has contributed vocals to a track by Jamaican dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry. She’s already appeared (fully clothed) in a few small indie flicks, and this May she’ll play the lead in Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s low-budget film about a high-priced call girl, The Girlfriend Experience. It’s enough to make your average porn star give up a life lived on her back—or side or all fours—but not Grey.