BIOGRAPHY -

Vanessa del Rio (born as Ana Maria Sanchez on March 31, 1952 in Harlem, New York, U.S.) was an American pornographic actress. She is a daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Puerto Rico of a mixed African and Spanish background. She grew up in Harlem and as a child and young adult she attended mostly Catholic schools. Vanessa del Rio began appearing in adult films in 1974 as a way to earn rent money, and thus became the first Hispanic porn star. Though she retired from adult films in 1986 in part due to the AIDS scare prevalent at the time, she remains somewhat active in the adult entertainment industry through her web site and by making special appearances at award shows, conventions, etc. Over the course of her 22-year career, del Rio has appeared in over 200 pornographic movies, the last of which was the film Dr. Lust. She's also appeared in several music videos, notably "Get Money" by Junior M.A.F.I.A. Initially, del Rio was well-known due to her extremely large clitoris and for being the first porn actress to regularly engage in extended anal sex (for this reason she was dubbed the "anal queen" of porn). She is best known now for her blunt sense of humor. While helping out middle-aged curators with the installation of a sex museum in New York, she quipped, "They're so repressed - I know what they really want." In spring of 2007 the German art book publisher Taschen released a deluxe, heavily illustrated biography titled Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior.