| Annabel Chong | |
|---|---|
| Born | Grace Quek[1] May 22, 1972 Singapore |
| Other names | Annabella |
| Ethnicity | Chinese Singaporean |
| Height | 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) |
| No. of adult films | 52 (per IAFD) |
Grace Quek (Chinese: 郭盈恩; pinyin: Guō Yíng'ēn), better known by her stage name Annabel Chong, is a former pornographic actress now living in the United States.
On January 19, 1995, at the age of 22, she became famous by engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 men over a ten-hour period, setting a world record, with the resulting footage being packaged as The World's Biggest Gang Bang.[2] The film started a trend of "record-breaking" gang bang pornography, which saw her record subsequently surpassed.[2]
Chong is also the subject of the documentary Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.
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Chong was born and raised in Singapore in a middle-class Protestant Singaporean Chinese family.[3][4][2] She was a student at Raffles Girls' School, where she was enlisted in the country's Gifted Education Programme, and Hwa Chong Junior College.[2] Former teachers and classmates describe her as quiet, intelligent, and studious.[2]
After taking her A levels, she took nearly three years off, including a year spent in the United States.[2] She then went on to study law at King's College London under a scholarship.[2] While in the United Kingdom, she got drunk on a train. There, she met a man and agreed to have sex with him in an alleyway.[2] He brought along other men, and she was gang raped and robbed in a rubbish closet under an inner-city housing block.[2][5]
At the age of 21, she dropped out of law school and went on to graduate studies in photography, art, and gender studies at the University of Southern California (USC),[2] where she excelled academically and also began working in pornographic films.[1][5] Chong went on to graduate work in gender studies at USC.[2]
Chong presented her work in pornography as an attempt to challenge the settled notions and assumptions of viewers about female sexuality. For example, her conception of a gang bang was based on the example of Messalina, a wife of the emperor Claudius. Historically, Messalina has suffered a poor reputation, a fact that some attribute (at least partly) to gender bias. Chong sought to question the double standard that denies women the ability to exhibit the same sexuality as men, by modelling what a female "stud" would be.
Since her parents did not approve of her dropping out of law school, she needed a source of income to pay her college fees.[2] Chong started in porn by answering an advertisement for a modelling agency in LA Weekly. The modelling agency turned out to be an adult film company,[2] which led to photo shoots and then an interview with director John T. Bone. Bone, recognizing Chong's talent, embarked on producing a series of films starring her. She was the new hardcore star in her early gangbangs such as Sgt. Pecker's Lonely Hearts Club Gangbang and I Can't Believe I Did the Whole Team. Chong was reportedly interested in blurring the boundary between pornography and performance art in her work.[2]
The production that propelled her into the limelight was another Bone production The World's Biggest Gang Bang, released in 1995 when Chong was 22.[1][2] Part of her motivation to do the film was an attempt to challenge gender roles.[2] Chong advertised on adult television for 300 participants for the event. Reports initially differed as to whether she had sex with 251 men over the course of 10 hours,[1] or with around 70 men multiple times to reach a total of 251.[2] Some of the men did not wear condoms.[1] As well as being the largest single grouping of men in a pornographic film, Chong had started a new trend. Even though the movie is one of the highest grossing pornographic films,[2] Chong was never paid the US$10,000 she was promised,[6] and apparently did not receive any money at all from the video.[1]
After the event, Chong made a host of media appearances, including The Jerry Springer Show.[2]
This event also prompted author Chuck Palahniuk to write a novel, Snuff, about a fictional character who aimed to surpass Chong's record by having sex with 600 men.
In her March 2000 appearance on the radio program Loveline, Chong admitted that there were slightly fewer than 70 men in her gang bang and that there were water and lunch breaks during the 10-hour time span. For her performance, Chong earned a "dubious achievement award" in Esquire magazine.
In 2007, a play written by Ng Yi-Sheng based on her story, 251, was staged in Singapore, directed by Loretta Chen.[2]
The sensation caught the interest of university film student Gough Lewis. Lewis met Chong and embarked on producing a documentary about her, named Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, released in 1999.[2] The film includes footage from the gang bang shooting and her subsequent publicity appearances, explores Chong's motives, revisits with her the site of her rape, and depicts a painful conversation in Singapore between Chong and her mother, who until then didn't know about her daughter's career.[1] It was directed by Lewis, and featured contributions from Quek, Al Goldstein, Ron Jeremy and Seymore Butts.[1] In the film Chong states that she intended World's Biggest Gang Bang to challenge "the notion of women as passive sex objects", and that, "We're not wilting violets, we're not victims, for Christ's sake. Female sexuality is as aggressive as male sexuality. I wanted to take on the role of the stud. The more [partners], the better."[1] She also self-harms in the film, taking a knife to her arm.[1] The documentary propelled Chong further into the world media as it became a hit at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival,[2] where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize. The film has since been shown as part of university gender studies courses around the world.[2]
Chong continued to work in the porn industry for a short while after the documentary came out, directing and starring in movies as well as setting up a website. In 2000 she directed and performed in the gang bang movie Pornomancer, her take on William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. After 2000, she largely stopped appearing in mainstream porn videos, concentrating instead on producing content for her website and appearing in a few BDSM videos. In 2003, Chong retired from porn entirely,[2] leaving a final message on her website that "Annabel is dead"[2] and stating that she had become a web developer and consultant. She also stated that she intended to "begin her new life of peace and relative obscurity".[7]
She has largely declined media interviews since leaving the porn industry and has declined to comment on her pornographic career. Quek engaged in limited correspondence for the biographical play 251, and refused to endorse it, telling the producers "Do whatever you want with Annabel Chong because this person doesn't exist anymore."[2] She also stated that she could not understand the continuing fascination and sustained interest in Annabel Chong after many years.[8] As of 2008, she was still working as a web developer in California[2] and has also taken up marathon running.[8]