| Alexandra Quinn | |
| Birth Name: | Diane Purdie Stewart[1] [2] [3] [4] |
| Birth Date: | March 25, 1973 |
| Birth Place: | Hamilton, Ontario, Canada |
| Years Active: | 1989–1991, 2000–2006 |
| Height: | [5] |
| Alias: | Alexandra, Alexanderia Quinn, Alexandria Quinn, Dianne Colazzo |
Alexandra Quinn (born Diane Purdie Stewart[4] on March 25, 1973)[3] is a Canadian former pornographic actress.[6]
Quinn was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.[1] She was a gymnast and jazz singer as a teenager.[6]
Quinn emigrated from Canada with a falsified passport and entered the adult entertainment industry in the late 1980s, while she was underage by using a fake ID.[7] [8] She began stripping in Canada when she was 14.[9] Two years later she met pornographic actress Erica Boyer and moved to Los Angeles with her.[9] Quinn began performing in adult films at the age of 16 after Boyer introduced her to agent Jim South.[6] Quinn misrepresented her birth year as 1968, which would have made her 22 at the time of her adult film debut.[1] Her first scene was in the film Space Virgins, and it was a five-person group sex scene with two men and two other women, besides Quinn.[9] She won the 1991 AVN Award for Best Group Sex Scene - Video alongside Sunny McKay & Rocco Siffredi for their performance in Buttman's Ultimate Workout.[10] By November 1991 she had appeared in approximately 100 adult films, 60 of which were shot while she was still a minor.[11]
In 1991, Quinn forgot to bring her fake ID to an adult film shoot once and decided to use her real one instead, hoping that no one would notice.[7] She had been working in the adult film industry for over a year but had only turned 18 seven months earlier.[2] This discrepancy on her identification card revealed that she was underage in her earlier adult film appearances.[1] On October 31, 1991, the adult film industry began to destroy the dozens of films she was featured in while she was still a minor.[11] She had a breast augmentation surgery on the day of her 18th birthday, which made it easier to distinguish which films were shot while she was still underage and which ones were not.[7]
The Quinn case is mentioned often, usually together with the Traci Lords underage porn case, in sociological studies[12] and true crime books.[13] These cases triggered a media debate which ended with the passing of the Communications Decency Act in 1996.[14]
Quinn was unwelcome in the adult film industry after her real age was revealed.[5] She later had a $3,500/week contract with the Centerfold strip club in Memphis, which was terminated on October 28, 1993, because, according to Quinn, she refused to allow patrons to touch her.[15] In 1996 she contacted several adult-film production companies in an attempt to resume her career.[6] It took her eight years, after her real age was discovered, to begin working in adult films again on a regular basis.[5] During her eight-year hiatus she only appeared in five pornographic films.[5] Nearing age 30, she began getting cast in the MILF genre in 2000.[6] She was generally welcomed back into the adult film industry; however, Adam & Eve refused to distribute any films containing footage of her.[16] She retired from adult films in 2006.[6]
Quinn married the manager of a strip club called Tiffanies in Phoenix when she was 19 but divorced him four years later.[9]
Quinn was a witness in the murder investigation of Christopher Walsh, which was featured in the true crime novel Nobody Walks.[17]
| Year | Ceremony | Result | Category | Film |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | AVN Award | Best Group Sex Scene - Video (with Sunny McKay & Rocco Siffredi) | Buttman's Ultimate Workout | |
| 1991 | XRCO Award[18] | Sex Scene Of The Year (with Sunny McKay & Rocco Siffredi) | Buttman's Ultimate Workout | |