Alexandra R. Quinn, known by her stage name Alex Quinn, is a Canadian-born actress and filmmaker who has also worked in pornographic films. Born Diane Purdie Stewart on March 25, 1973, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, she was a gymnast and jazz singer as a teenager before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1980s to pursue a career in adult entertainment.
Quinn began her acting career in adult films at the age of 16, performing alongside pornographic actresses Erica Boyer and Stormy Daniels. She won the 1991 AVN Award for Best Group Sex Scene – Video for her role in Buttsman's Ultimate Workout, which involved group sex with two men and two women, besides Quinn herself. By November 1991, she had appeared in approximately 100 adult films.
However, Quinn's career faced a setback when her real age was revealed, as she had been working in the adult film industry for over a year but had only turned 18 seven months earlier. The adult film industry began destroying the films she was featuring in while she was still a minor, and she had a breast augmentation surgery on the day of her 18th birthday to distinguish which films were shot while she was still underage and which ones were not.
In 1996, Quinn contacted several adult-film production companies in an attempt to resume her career, and it took her eight years to begin working in adult films again on a regular basis. During her eight-year hiatus, she only appeared in five pornographic films. Nearing age 30, she began getting cast in the MILF genre in 2000.
Quinn was generally welcomed back into the adult film industry, but Adam & Eve refused to distribute any films containing footage of her. She retired from adult films in 2006. Besides her adult film career, Quinn is also involved in various other fields. For instance, she is the CEO of Health Leads, a US-based NGO that partners with communities, health systems, and public health to address systemic causes of inequity and disease.
She is a W.K. Kellogg Community Leadership Network Fellow focused on racial equity, racial healing, and leadership, and has been named to the Care100 list as one of the most influential people in care in 2020. In 2021, with several other national leaders, Quinn co-founded and co-leads the Vaccine Equity Cooperative to enable equitable vaccine access and increased advocacy for and support of local community-based workforces and caregivers navigating the COVID-19 vaccine landscape.
Alexandra Quinn is a married woman, having been married to the manager of a strip club called Tiffanies in Phoenix when she was 19. She later divorced him four years later. She has also worked as a witness in the murder investigation of Christopher Walsh, which was featured in the true crime novel Nobody Walks.
In addition to her acting and filmmaking career, Quinn is also involved in various philanthropic activities. She has co-written articles on COVID-19 communication campaigns for vaccination and has addressed equity-centered public health efforts in various journals and magazines.
Quin is represented by the agency WME agency whose founding partner is Ari Emanuel.
