Karenjit Kaur Vohra (born May 13, 1981), known by her stage name Sunny Leone (/liˈoʊni/), is a Canadian-American-Indian model and actress in the American and Indian film industries. She is a former pornographic actress. She was born in Canada to an Indian Sikh family. She has Canadian and American citizenship. Her pet name is Karen. She was named Penthouse Pet of the Year in 2003, was a contract performer for Vivid Entertainment, and was named by Maxim as one of the 12 top porn stars in 2010.
She has played roles in independent mainstream events, films, and television series. Her first mainstream appearance was in 2005, when she worked as a red carpet reporter for the MTV Video Music Awards on MTV India. In 2011, she participated in the Indian reality television series Bigg Boss. She also has hosted the Indian reality show Splitsvilla.
In 2012, she made her Bollywood debut in Pooja Bhatt's erotic thriller Jism 2 (2012) and shifted her focus to mainstream acting which was followed up with Jackpot (2013), Ragini MMS 2 (2014), Ek Paheli Leela (2015), Tera Intezaar (2017), and the Malayalam film Madhura Raja in 2019.
Apart from her acting career, she has been part of activism campaigns including the Rock 'n' Roll Los Angeles Half-Marathon to raise money for the American Cancer Society and has also posed for a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ad campaign with a rescued dog, encouraging pet owners to have their cats and dogs spayed and neutered.
Early life
Karenjit Kaur Vohra was born on May 13, 1981, in Sarnia, Ontario, to Sikh Indian Punjabi parents. As a young girl, she was a self-described tomboy, very athletic and played street hockey with the boys.
Although the family was Sikh, her parents enrolled her in Catholic school as it was felt to be unsafe for her to go to public school. When she was 13, her family moved to Fort Gratiot, Michigan, then to Lake Forest, California, a year later, fulfilling her grandparents' dream that the family be together in one place. She had her first kiss at 11, lost her virginity at 16 with a basketball player, and discovered her bisexuality at 18.
Pornographic career
Before working in the porn industry, Leone worked at a German bakery, a Jiffy Lube store, and later a tax and retirement firm. She was also studying to become a nurse.
A black-haired woman wearing a yellow top and jeans sitting behind a table looking up at the camera.
Leone at the 2002 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, one of her earliest promotional appearances
When picking a name for her adult career, Leone has stated that Sunny is her real name and that Leone was picked by Bob Guccione, former owner of Penthouse magazine. After posing for that magazine, she was named Penthouse Pet of the Month for the March 2001 issue, followed by a feature in the Holiday 2001 edition of Hustler magazine as a Hustler Honey. She has also appeared in other magazines including Cheri, Mystique Magazine, High Society, Swank, AVN Online, Leg World, Club International and Lowrider, while her online credits include ModFX Models, Suze Randall, Ken Marcus and Mac & Bumble.
In 2003, she was named "Penthouse Pet of the Year" and starred in the video Penthouse Pets in Paradise alongside Tera Patrick and Kyla Cole. In 2005 Adam & Eve appointed her as their West Coast Internet Sales Representative.
That same year, Leone signed a three-year contract with Vivid Entertainment with which she transitioned into hardcore pornography, stating that she would only do lesbian scenes. Her first movie released was titled Sunny, and was released in December 2005. Her next movie, Virtual Vivid Girl Sunny Leone, was the first interactive title for Leone, who was the first Vivid Girl to make such a movie. Taking only four days to film, the movie won her first AVN Award (Best Interactive DVD). She followed this with Sunny Loves Cher, which featured her first on-screen squirting, and The Female Gardner co-starring Mikayla Mendez and Daisy Marie.
Leone's last two movies under her contract with Vivid were It's Sunny in Brazil, which was filmed in Brazil, and The Sunny Experiment. The movies were released in October and December 2007, respectively.
In May 2007, upon re-signing her contract with Vivid for another six films, Leone agreed to do her first boy/girl scenes, though only with her fiancé, Matt Erikson. That year she underwent breast augmentation, and shot her first movie under the new contract titled Sunny Loves Matt. For that film she was nominated for three (out of six) AVN awards in 2009, in addition to being a choice for Female Performer of the Year. She followed up her first boy-girl title with The Other Side of Sunny in October 2008, which would be the last time she would perform with Erikson.
In January 2008, Leone revealed that she was no longer exclusive to Erikson, and had done scenes with other actors, including Tommy Gunn, Charles Dera, James Deen and Voodoo.
In 2009, Vivid released her only adult movie performing with multiple male actors, titled "Sunny B/G Adventure". Her final release under contract with Vivid – Undress Me, once again made her exclusive to performing with just one male actor, Daniel Weber (he performed under the stage name Ariel King), who subsequently became her husband.
In August 2009, she announced the launch of her own studio, Sunlust Pictures, with Daniel Weber as her partner. With her new venture Leone announced her plans to write, direct and create her own brand of adult movies with Vivid Entertainment as her distributor. Her first independent production, The Dark Side of the Sun, was released in March 2009, and was debuted at the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas. In June 2009, she held a casting call in Las Vegas for her second independent production titled Sunny Slumber Party, which was released in September 2009. She followed up with three other self-produced features; Gia Portrait of a Porn Star (2010) which was nominated for multiple AVN awards, Roleplay (2011) and Goddess (2012) which featured her first anal sex scene.
No longer exclusive to Vivid, Leone began working with other studios and performers since 2009. She leveraged her online popularity by striking deals with firms like PPPcard, AdultPokerParty.com, Brickhouse, Flirt4Free, Totemcash, and Imlive to sell and distribute her content over the Internet and other media. She won the "Web Babe of the Year" at the 2008 Xbiz Awards. Her websites and business interests are run under her banner company Leone L.L.C. She indicated in an April 2012 interview that 80 per cent of the traffic on her website, and 60 per cent of her revenue comes from India.
Leone was part of the Vivid Comedy Tour, and has modelled for the Vivid Footwear collection. Leone has also participated in events like the Vivid/ClubJenna Lingerie Bowl and Vivid's Hot Rod Night. Doc Johnson launched a pocket pal in 2006 moulded to her vagina, and in 2008 released the Sunny Leone Exciter vibrator. Control MFG used Leone's image along with other Vivid girls to market their line of skateboards. She is paired with Gab Ekoe, one of the Team Control riders. She also indicated that she plans to launch her own line of lingerie and other Sunny-branded products including a diamond jewellery line.
In September 2009, an iPhone application consisting of a collection of non-nude photos, some videos and a porn star-penned blog was approved by Apple for sale in the iTunes store, making it the first officially sanctioned application featuring a porn actor. By February 2010, the app had been removed by Apple from the store.
Leone was voted number 13 (up from number 41 in 2007) on Genesis magazine's "Top 100 Porn stars" list, number 34 on Desiclubs.com's Top 50 Coolest Desis of 2004, and one of the "40 under 40" ranking on AVN Online magazine. In 2010, she was named by Maxim as one of the 12 top female stars in porn. She was voted number 82 in the Top 99 Women for 2012 in AskMen.com's list.
In 2013, she announced her retirement from the adult industry, stating: "I am lucky that the audience is accepting me. I have come my way from there (porn industry). I don't have any plans as of now to go back there."
In 2016, she was chosen as one of BBC's 100 Women. The tech magazine Exhibit chose Leone for their cover girl of the October 2016 issue.
Mainstream appearances prior to 2011
Leone's first mainstream appearance was in 2005, when she was a red carpet reporter for the MTV Awards on MTV India. She has also had a cameo in the film The Girl Next Door, performed in Ja Rule's video "Livin' It Up", and a video for Kidd Skilly. Other credits include E!'s Wild On! and the Sundance Film Festival's After Dark. Leone was a contestant in the second season of the Fox reality show My Bare Lady 2: Open for Business, in which a group of adult actresses were given classes and training on how to pitch investment ideas and competed for success in the business world. In addition to filming her scene for Debbie Does Dallas in 2007, Leone was also part of a Showtime documentary of the same name detailing the production of the movie and the personal lives of its stars.
She indicated that for the right price she would seriously consider a career in Bollywood. She was courted by Indian directors in the past but felt uncomfortable with the roles that she would have played. Director Mohit Suri reportedly asked Leone to play the lead role in his film Kalyug, but instead cast Deepal Shaw as he could not afford Leone's $1 million acting fee. She has mentioned that Aamir Khan is her favorite Bollywood actor, and that over 60% of her fans are from South Asia.
In 2008, Leone announced that she would be starring in a mainstream action adventure movie titled Pirates Blood, which was shot in Oman. The shooting was completed in two weeks and was to be released in winter 2008. Leone also landed a role in Middle Men, producer Chris Mallick's indie feature about the birth of the online porn industry set for wide theatrical release in 2009. She appeared in the 2010 film The Virginity Hit playing a version of herself, where she is hired to take the virginity of the lead character.
Leone has made appearances at events such as the 2002 SEMA International Auto Salon, the 2002 Extreme Autofest Pomona and the 2006 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. She also served as hostess at events in clubs like the Mansion in Miami and the Highlands in Hollywood.
In 2005, she was mentioned in Forbes magazine for a story on Vivid Entertainment. Leone has also been featured in mainstream publications like FHM, Front and Jane magazine. In 2007, along with the other Vivid Girls, she was seen in a 48' high holiday billboard in Times Square at W. 48th Street and Seventh Avenue. She is among the Penthouse Pets who appears in the 2007 video game Pocket Pool, and was featured in a coffee table book titled Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry by Michael Grecco.
