Annie Ample was a pioneer in becoming famous for being famous. She was one of America’s highest-paid strippers of the 1980’s. Her daughter says she took her craft seriously and put everything she had into being the best she could be at whatever she did no matter how silly or trivial her career may have seemed. In doing so, she happily bounced along the fringes of stardom for years.
Annie first got worldwide attention in 1981 after going topless at the French Riviera during the Cannes Film Festival. She also later insured her breasts for $1 million dollars in 1981. Her implants are what later lead to her death.
Annie performed as a stripper until 1987. In one of her last interviews before disappearing from the public eye, she said she was constantly ill throughout her career because of her leaking silicone breast implants she had gotten back in 1974 in Mexico at the request of her then boyfriend.
She wrote a critically acclaimed autobiography about her years as a stripper. In October 1988, Annie’s book was published, “The Bare Facts: My Life As a Stripper”. She wrote about corruption in the strip club industry, including how club managers would gain control of many of the dancers by getting them hooked on cocaine to force them into prostitution.
Annie became a member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the American Guild of Variety Artists, further legitimizing her celebrity status.
She said that her proudest accomplishment in the adult industry was that she never made a porn film. Al Goldstein once offered Annie $20,000 to do a scene with John Holmes but she turned it down.
Annie revealed in an interview that she had been diagnosed with lupus in 1986. She quietly passed away of heart failure complicated by multiple sclerosis on New Year’s Day 2008. No one knew she had passed away because her family never released the news and not that many people knew her real name. Annie was born Karen Ann Bell. When she died, she was married to her fifth husband and was known by her married name, Karen Foxx.
Her daughter says her mother had grown to hate the persona she had created and had become a virtual recluse the last 16 years of her life wanting nothing more to do with fame and fortune. She now plans to write a book about her mother’s final years as a celebrity, her withdrawal from the public eye, and what she did in the years leading up to her death.
“My mother’s legacy is her courage—she was never afraid to try things that were new or different and did not care what people thought of her for doing what she wanted to do. I was so proud of her. She did not smoke cigarettes or use drugs. She was a hard-working parent who did everything she did to support her family. As Annie Ample, she just wanted to be famous. It is a shame that few got to know the real Karen.”
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Porn Star Babylon 
Posted on April 24, 2010
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