Famous porn star who died at the age of 43: Who is Jesse Jane?
Jesse Jane, who starred in the highest-budget film series in pornographic film history and once participated in a beauty contest, was found dead in a house. She got into porn at the perfect time when porn stars were appreciated.
The cause of death is believed to be a drug overdose, said Francisco Franco, an officer with the Moore Police Department in Oklahoma.
Franco said officers went to a home where Jane and her boyfriend, Brett Hasenmueller, were staying Wednesday morning for a welfare check.
Stating that both of them were found dead, Franco stated that an investigation had been launched.
Jesse Jane, who died at the age of 43, was one of the biggest names in the pornography industry in the early 2000s.
Cynthia Ann Howell (July 16, 1980 – c. January 24, 2024), known professionally as Jesse Jane, was an American pornographic film actress. She entered the industry in the early 2000s, later becoming one of the few adult film stars to transition into mainstream film and television roles successfully.
"She was an actress of an era when adult films were watched all over the world," Brian Gross, a publicist for the porn industry, said in a statement to The New York Times.
Avoiding the shift that pornography embraced in the mid-2000s, Jane withdrew from the industry in 2007. Jane later began launching her own line of sex toys.
"I got into porn at the perfect time when porn stars were valued," Jane told GQ in 2018. "They were glamorous. You turned heads when you walked into a room. Everyone knew who you were because they had to buy your product, DVDs, and everything. But the internet killed this business," she said.
Jesse Jane's work is not limited to the porn industry. She was one of the rare names that reached Hollywood, including the television series Starsky and Hutch, which was remade in 2004, and the HBO series Entourage.