Annie Sprinkle

Director & actor · born 23 July 1954 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., is a ground breaking feminist artist, long time filmmaker, and certified sexologist. From 1974 to 1996 Sprinkle worked on 100+ adult feature films. Sprinkle has appeared in dozens of documentaries and six B movies,before becoming an internationally renowned performance artist and an independent filmmaker. The connections she made along the way shaped her involvement in feminist politics, human rights, and freedom of expression; and she remains avidly committed to all of these ideals. Films Annie Sprinkle has directed/produced have shown in hundreds of film festivals around the world. Sluts & Goddesses (1990) broke new ground in feminist films. Sprinkle was a paid consultant for HBO’s The Deuce with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Annie Sprinkle’s 2027 film, Water Makes Us Wet, premiered at the prestigious German art festival, documenta 14 (where she also performed, lectured and had an exhibition), and then screened at NY’s MoMA. A few of her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking, four San Francisco Arts Commission grants, the Kathy Acker Award for Achievement in the Avant Garde (2014), the Artist/Scholar/Activist Award from Performance Studies International at Stanford (2013) and Tom of Finland Lifetime Achievement Award (2020). Her archive is housed at Harvard. These days Annie Sprinkle is screening the third film in her queer environmental documentary film trilogy, Playing with Fire—An Ecosexual Emergancy. She’s also on an HBO special, Dear Ms.—A Revolution in Print. At 71 years old, Sprinkle is still active in filmmaking.

Where to start: Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency (2025).