“I’m amazed how many people are interested in performance art,” adult entertainment star/sex educator Annie Sprinkle said, mocking herself to a full crowd of people interested in her sexual presentation.

Audience members who were unaware of what Sprinkle’s presentation was to consist of were in for a huge shock. Sprinkle spent her early career as a porn star.

Sprinkle has bared it all for her career – from starring in over 150 mainstream pornographic films, to authoring a series of books about sexual intimacy, to lecturing and providing workshops to audiences around the country and using her profession as the basis of her art, and her breast paintings. She is better known for her films, and being an innovator in the feminist movement.

The San Francisco-based “pleasure activist” was born Ellen Steinberg, a shy, sensitive girl. She changed to Annie Sprinkle as an alter ego, and to become something she was not as Steinberg: an entertainer.

Sprinkle was best-known in her film career for her animated orgasms, and became one of the leading adult film stars in the late 1970s and early 1980s with films like “Porn Flakes” and starred in her directorial debut, “Inside Annie Sprinkle.”

“There were no scripts so you have to make it up as you go along,” Sprinkle said, as the crowd watched explicit clips of one of Sprinkle’s earlier films.

Wearing a purple dress with spider webs, fitting for the Halloween season, the former film star went through a few of her most memorable performances in segments of films, taking us through her first interracial scene, her first girl-on-girl scene, taking the crowd through a stage which, Sprinkle said, “was the point we discovered shaving our pussies.”

Looking back on her life and her film career, Sprinkle said she has no regrets.

“It’s the acting that is embarrassing,” Sprinkle said about having sex on camera.

In 1991, Sprinkle decided to stop making mainstream porn and take a different approach.

She began making safe sex movies, as AIDS awareness was in full-swing, and writing books about the intimacy of sex with the coming together of two “forces.” Sprinkle eventually became a performance artist, where she said she made more money than in her film career.

Sprinkle said she enjoyed her experience as a performance artist, saying she could be more outspoken and more political during her performances.

On stage, Sprinkle could be free to express how she felt being a woman – using her anatomy almost as a stage prop. Sprinkle shared part of her performance she calls the “Bosom Ballet,” where she removed her top, grabbed her breasts and synchronized them to the sounds of the music.

Midway through her “Ballet,” she took off her curly red wig, to reveal a bald head. Stunning the crowd in a powerful way, Sprinkle exposed that she has survived breast cancer – making the “Ballet” one of the most significant moments of the night.

Elizabeth Hartman, a member of the audience, said she had written a report for a women’s studies class about Sprinkle’s work prior to yesterday’s lecture.

“It [Sprinkle’s performance] opened up a whole new world for me- I really don’t know what to make of it right now,” Hartman said.

Ayrron Smeltzer also was in shock.

“It’s nice to see someone brave enough to do that,” Smeltzer said, referring to Sprinkle sharing her life experience.

Sprinkle created the “Aphrodite Award,” and last night she handed out awards to roughly 15 people, honoring people who had taught about sex education or expressed themselves using nudity or sexual content.

It was a night that will always be remembered, for one strong woman who has lived a life not recognizable to the common standards.