Asia Carrera (born August 6, 1973 in New York City) is a former American porn star and adult model of German and Japanese descent.
Asia was born in New York City to a Japanese father and German mother. She was raised in Little Silver, New Jersey, attending Little Silver Public Schools and Red Bank Regional High School. She studied piano as a child, and had performed at Carnegie Hall twice before the age of 15. When she was 16, she ran away from home because she felt her parents put too much pressure on her to succeed academically. She won an academic scholarship to Rutgers University and is a member of Mensa.
After doing at least one photoshoot for an adult magazine, she put together a demo porn tape in 1993. At the end of that year she relocated to California to break into the pornography business and she announced her retirement at the end of 2003. She is sometimes credited as Asia or Jessica Bennett.
Carrera has also been involved in writing, producing, and directing movies, as well as doing all her own make-up and hair-styling, and doing much of the hair and make-up for other actresses in the same movies.
As is common practice among adult film actresses, the name “Asia Carrera” is a pseudonym. According to interviews, she chose the stage name surname from actress Tia Carrere, intentionally misspelling it for legal reasons.
After her contract with Vivid expired in the mid-1990s, Asia had her right labia minora pierced and has henceforth had a variety of 1/2″ gold rings affixed there ever since. At this time she also had her first breast enlargement, going from a medium B to at least a full C cup. She has had at least one subsequent breast surgery and is now a D cup or larger.
Asia has performed only a few anal sex scenes, again waiting for her contract with Vivid to expire to do her first scene in the movie A Is for Asia (1995). While anal sex pays better, Asia stated that, while she found it enjoyable, it wasn’t something she did in her personal life a great deal and had no interest in becoming an “anal queen” in the industry.
Describing herself as “the nerd of porn”, Carrera has an active presence on the Internet. She proudly proclaims that she created her own Web site in the late 1990s, including writing the code and editing the pictures.
Asia is an avid player of Unreal Tournament and she has designed her own game skins, and was featured in the show Players on the G4 games cable channel, where she revealed that her screen name is “Megabitchgoddess.” Asia hosted her own Unreal Tournament server that featured custom maps designed by fans that frequented her chatroom that she has hosted on her site since 1997. She is also a Corvette aficionado but traded hers in after starting a family.
In 1995, Carrera married adult film director Bud Lee. They divorced in 2003 after a long separation, but continue to remain good friends. Asia dated Clarke, a former grip from her porn sets, for a few years until his visa expired and he returned to England. Soon after, she married nutritionist and author Don Lemmon on December 19, 2003. The couple moved to St. George, Utah, where Carrera gave birth to her first daughter, Catalina, on March 4, 2005. While she was almost 8 months pregnant with their second baby, Don was killed in a car accident near Las Vegas on June 10, 2006. In an expression of concern about her livelihood and worries of not being able to support their two children on her own, Asia has begun to solicit donations on her personal webpage (AsiaCarerra.com).
Their son, who was born on July 31, 2006, was initially to be named Devin; but she decided, after Lemmon’s death, to name him Donald Edward Lemmon III. She gave birth to her son at home unassisted. She and Don had planned for the birth to be unassisted, but after his death she was offered free midwifery services; she was unsure whether she wanted to give birth alone without her husband. The birth occurred 11 days prior to the estimated due date, while a midwife was en route. They are currently doing well.
She doesn’t have a MySpace page, stating “No, any ‘Asia’ page at MySpace or other social site is an imposter. I’ve had my own site and domain since 1996, so I don’t need to be anywhere else.
Years active: 1993-2005
Awards/Nominations:
1995 AVN Female Performer of the Yea
2000 AVN Best Couples Sex Scene – Film (Search for the Snow Leopard)
2000 AVN Award nominee – Best Actress – Film
2001 AVN Hall of Fame inductee
2007 XRCO Hall of Fame inductee – XRCO Members’ Choice
Performances
Solo: Masturbation, Dildo
Lesbian: Softcore, Dildo
Boy/girl: Blowjob, Vaginal, Anal
