Joanna Angel is an American pornographic film actress, director, and writer of adult films. She founded the website BurningAngel.com in April 2002 with her roommate Mitch Fontaine, and has been credited with helping the growth of the alt porn genre. Launched as a response to websites such as SuicideGirls, the website featured alternative performers acting in exclusively hardcore scenes with a stronger focus on a punk aesthetic

Early life

Angel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Israeli mother and an American father. She was raised in River Edge in Bergen County, New Jersey, where she attended Cherry Hill Elementary School and graduated from River Dell Regional High School in 1998. After graduating, she enrolled in Rutgers University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature with a minor in Film Studies.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Angel is believed to be the first person in the pornography industry to have been raised in Orthodox Judaism. She worked in a kosher fast food restaurant in Teaneck during high school, then at an Applebee's and another restaurant called Happy's Health Grille during college.

Pornography career

 Angel is a former model for SuicideGirls, a softcore pornography website. In her early 20s she founded the "indie-punk-porn" site BurningAngel.com, featuring interviews and stories of sex with band members, along with nude photographs. Drawing inspiration from a live sex performance by porn actress Nina Hartley, Angel later began making hardcore movies for the site. 

According to Encyclopedia of the Zombie, Angel is "regarded as a major influence in the mainstreaming of alt porn", and is credited with making the genre financially viable.She has produced and performed in several zombie-themed hardcore films: Re-Penetrator (2005), Dong of the Dead (2009), Evil Head (2012), and The Walking Dead: A Hardcore Parody (2013). She said in a 2006 interview, "I think [alt porn is] a movement. I think I've started something.

Angel has written, produced, directed and starred in films available exclusively through BurningAngel, as well as appearing in more traditionally distributed adult films. She was under an exclusive contract with VCA Pictures, which expired in March 2007, and was, at one time, represented by the adult talent agency Bad Ass Models