Born 3/31/52, Vanessa Del Rio AKA Anna Maria Sanchez began doing loops in the early '70s. The Puerto Rican appeared on the big screen in 1974's Cherry Hustlers while her first big role came in Midnight Desires where she sucks down two cocks at once. Vanessa would do anything. For a magazine shoot, she sucked milk out of a cow's udders. She starred in several loops with Luis Short-Studd, a dwarf, and set projectors all over America a flame when she let the little fellow slip his fist up her elasticated bunghole.

Anna Maria Sanchez attended Roman Catholic day schools. "One of my chores was to wash, starch and iron he nuns' and priests' vestments. But as a student, I would rather have fun than study. I busted loose in high school. I missed two days in eight years of Catholic school, but on the first day of high school, I was approached by the resident whore. "Wanna cut class?" she asked. That was the beginning of the end." Sanchez lost her virginity at age 14. "My boyfriend was 18 and a virgin like me. We went to this porno movie house. The manager didn't care how old we were as long as we paid our two bucks. The theater showed triple features, but back then the type of fucking they did was with their underwear on, and usually they were under the covers, not hardcore like today. But it was hot for the times. "We sat in the balcony and my boyfriend pulled his cock out of his pants and wrapped my hand around it and taught me to jerk him off. We did this a few times, and finally we went back to his place when his parents weren't home and fucked our brains out. From that time on, it was fuck, fuck, fuck whenever and wherever I could."

A free spirit, Vanessa spent two years traveling around with a guy in his VW bus. "We were outlaws. I worked as a barmaid and a go-go dancer, and that opened me up. Then a friend of mine called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to Sweden on short notice. He said I'd make fuck films at fifty dollars per film and three films a day."

In other interviews, Vanessa doesn't sound nearly as enthusiastic about her time in porn, saying that she only did it because her family needed the money. Generally speaking, porn queens, like the rest of us, say what people want to hear.

As though driven by the demons of a pre-Columbian time, she attacks each sex scene in a frenzy of lust that bares her teeth and flares her nostrils. Love and goodness pour from her like rain, as she washes over her lover with the expansive generosity of the gods. With the body of a warrior queen, fine tuned in the gymnasiums and weight rooms of Manhattan, Vanessa brings extraordinary power to the screen. Unleashed before the camera, she explodes with the fury of a tropical storm, drenching her bedmates with primal energy. Every part of her is built for sex. With her thundering thighs locked around a man's pelvis he is powerless to escape. Her lips are legend. Big as beefsteaks and hungry as a forty-niner, they could suck cum from a bowling pin. These are lips that love cock - the bigger the better. Del Rio did her last film shortly afterwards, 1987's Dr. Lust. Vanessa appeared in an episode of NYPD Blue in February, 1996, playing a retired porn queen harassed by a fan. Del Rio still strips in clubs, poses for magazines and internet sex sites, and signs autographs at porn conventions and sex shops

That Lady From Rio starring Vanessa Del Rio, Marlene Willoughby
Sharon Mitchell, Jamie Gillis, Bobby Astyr Synopsis: Vanessa is the leader of an international organization of white slave traders who supply women to brothels all over the world. Her mob is expanding and her number one henchman has plans for taking over the whole operation. She has to duck the law as well enemies to stay on top of things.