She was born Annette Martin on 1 December 1954 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and raised in what she describes as a sexually-repressive Mormon family. Maybe, it's that upbringing which gave Annette that quality of always making you feel you can't quite believe your luck that this gal is actually doing hardcore and you're getting to watch it! With a brief and unhappy marriage behind her, she made her hardcore debut in Alex De Renzy's 1973 feature Lady Freaks. She had been supporting her former husband through a variety of jobs, including nursing, modelling and even a brief stint in a massage parlor prior to that.
Following her divorce, ballet trained Annette moved to San Francisco and ended up dancing in erotic shows and eventually stripping. She met porn star Bonnie Holiday doing the latter, and ended up moving in with Bonnie and her husband, becoming part of a menage a trois that lasted three and a half years. Bonnie persuaded her to do Lady Freaks and would be Annette's lesbian co-star in it. Annette shot just three more movies before making her first retirement in mid-1974, deciding to go to college to major in video technology. Despite being a straight 'A' student, she dropped out in 1976 to return to porn.
She would fast become one of the burgeoning industry's biggest female stars, earning previously unheard of fees and being very selective about what she would do and who she would work with. In 1977, she received an adult film best actress award for A Coming Of Angels. Richard Pacheco was one of her favourite male actors. "The first time I worked with him, I was so overwhelmed by my orgasm that I fainted. When I came to, Richard was holding me in his arms. Everyone else had gone home," Annette recalls. He, in turn, described her as the first great beauty in porn. "When she was on a set, you did not see the same behaviour that you saw on other sets. If any of the males were abusing any females around Annette, she'd have them fired. And Annette had the box office to do that. And she took care of newcomers. She let them know that they did not have to fuck everybody and that they did not need to do this or that," he said.
Annette was even choosy about mainstream movie roles, turning down a part in the horror movie The Howling because she believed it was too violent. She was, however, cast by Blake Edwards's as one of the porn actresses living up the hill in the movie 10, and Brian De Palma had originally cast her to play porn star Holly Body in his movie Body Double, but when Columbia Pictures executives learned about Annette's hardcore past they got nervous and Melanie Griffith eventually bagged the role, leaving Annette to work as a consultant only on the movie.
Annette Haven retired again in 1985, re-enrolling in college and this time graduated in computer programming. She made a brief comeback to hardcore movies in 1989, shooting lesbian only scenes in Bodies In Heat - The Sequel and Talk Dirty To Me 6. In the late 1990s, with the blessing of her new husband and in her 40s, she made a few brief, non-hardcore fetish movies. One of the first superstars to be inducted in to the AVN Hall Of Fame, Annette says money was never her object in doing adult movies. "If I wanted to be a prostitute, there's people in the Mid-east who have offered a million dollars to fuck me. I cook, I sew, I clean, I knit baby booties ... The only difference between me and lots of women is that I think sex is ok, and I'm not afraid to say so. The whole point of my being in the industry is to help change American attitudes and establish that sex is a good thing. I still consider myself a lady," she says. And so, most definitely, and always, do we! In her near 150 movies, Annette Haven appeared under many aliases. They include Annette Heaven, Nanette Heaven, Annette Funette, Cheryl Nelson, Annette Robinson and Annette Havens.
