LOS ANGELES—Gianna Dior likes when guys are confident going into scenes with her.

“Not being cocky though,” Dior says. “There’s a very thin line between being confident and cocky. If you’re cocky, it’s an instant turnoff.”

Enter Steve Holmes, the AVN Hall of Fame performer who worked with Dior for the first time in late July.

“Steve was like the perfect balance,” Dior says. “He was very confident. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t make me feel weird.”

Neither did fellow Hall of Fame stud Manuel Ferrara, the five-time AVN Male Performer the Year who also took Dior for a spin earlier this summer.

“He was the exact same. He didn’t make me feel uncomfortable or that I was lower than him so it was really good,” Dior explains. “I think that’s why I have really good scenes—if the guy is just not cocky.”

Since making her porn debut in May, it seems like good things happen about every time Dior steps onto the set. Just ask AVN Hall of Fame producer/director Jules Jordan, who already has shot the 21-year-old Spiegler Girl three times.

“Gianna Dior has all the qualities to have major star impact,” Jordan tells AVN. “She loves what she does and gives it 100 percent. She’s definitely one to look out for this year.”

A native of Andalusia, Alabama, a small town about two hours south of Auburn, Dior waited tables at a sushi restaurant and was a receptionist at an eye doctor’s office before porn. She also majored in Psychology at Auburn University. But despite being busy, she remembers longing for some excitement.

“And I was on Tinder one day looking around for hookups and this dude from Florida messaged me and said, ‘Have you ever thought about doing porn?’” Dior explains. “Honestly, it had never even crossed my mind. I don’t know why because it seems like something I would do.

“He was like, ‘Why don’t you come to Miami and try it for a week or so.’ Honestly, at that point I had nothing to lose. I was bored with my life and I was like, ‘This is a good adventure.’ I’m very free-spirited. I was like, ‘Whatever, I’m just gonna go. I took off work and didn’t go to class for a week just to go. And I ended up just not coming back.”

Dior performed in about a dozen scenes in Miami during her first month—including work for BangBros, Mofos and PropertySex, before she realized she was going to need a new agent in order to get to the next level.

“So I found Spiegler,” Dior says.

She says it was veteran Brazzers contract performer/director Keiran Lee that connected her to Mark Spiegler, the L.A.-based super agent who has represented five of the past six AVN Female Performer of the Year winners.

“This is really weird timing,” Dior recalls. “He messaged me on Twitter and was like, ‘Hey, are you in L.A. or are you in Miami?’ And I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll come to L.A. I’m looking for a new agent.’ And he mentioned Spiegler and gave me his number and I was like, OK. I had no idea who Spiegler was. Never heard the name before.”

Spiegler tells AVN Dior sent him a text on June 20th, mentioning she had heard from multiple people about the qualities of his agency.

“I always save the first contact if it’s a text or an email,” Spiegler says. “It’s kind of humorous to look back.”

Spiegler had already heard of Dior, who is a stunning mix of Italian and Native American.

“I had seen her on the [AdultDVDTalk] message board,” Spiegler says. “I’ll look at that and certain people highlight new performers. So I knew she was pretty. I went back on there and I went on Twitter and watched a few clips of her. She also she seemed like she could kind of act. I know she doesn’t think she can but she seemed OK at that, too.”

Spiegler told Dior she had to find a way to get to L.A. if she wanted to get serious about her career.

“It’s like building the foundation of a house. You don’t wanna do it with bricks missing. You need to have a solid foundation and be here [in L.A.],” Spiegler says.

Many girls miss out on opportunities that only come with being in Porn Valley and ready to work on a moment’s notice, according to Spiegler.

“You have to get some momentum going,” he says. “When I talked to her she told me at the time, ‘I have shoots until July 6th in Miami but I’ll come out there the next day. And I will say that so far she’s done every single thing she said she would do.”

Dior finished her last Miami shoot on Friday, July 6th, left for Porn Valley at 3 a.m Saturday and arrived at 1 p.m. Monday.

“Eighteen hours driving one day straight—I didn’t stop,” Dior says. “I was ready to get here. I didn’t want to waste any time. So I got here in two days and was working two days after that.”

Less than a month after Dior arrived, she was booked into October; Spiegler at press time had begun taking bookings for her in November.

“As soon as he said you have move to LA, I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it,’” Dior recalls. “If I want to do something and I feel like it’s good in my mind I’m just going to do it. So I felt good about it. It was really scary. I’m not going to lie.”

Dior’s tight schedule has included invitations to shoot for a who’s who of adult industry producers. Among her recent or upcoming bookings are Girlsway, Jonni Darkko, Mike Adriano, Mick Blue/BAM Visions, PornPros, Babes, Kevin Moore, Wicked Pictures, New Sensations, Adam & Eve, Zero Tolerance, Elegant Angel, Perv City, Digital Playground, Pure Taboo, Lisa Ann, Amateur Allure and Brazzers.

“She seems pretty responsible and I think she will do well,” Spiegler says. “She’s obviously really pretty and is really good in a scene. I always say as long they keep their heads on straight…”

Dior believes she made the right decision. “I feel like I’m definitely meant to be with Spiegler,” she reasons. “I’m very hard working and professional and it just wasn’t my scene down in Miami. Everyone’s like, ‘Do whatever you want.’ I like to be professional, straightforward. I like to have a schedule and know what I’m doing and it just wasn’t like that in Miami.”

Dior at the time of this interview had yet to meet Keiran Lee, but was booked to work with him in late July, when she intended to thank him personally for his referral.

“I owe him my life,” Dior says. “It was so crazy—just perfect timing.”

It turns out their scene together exceeded Lee’s expectations, so much so that when it was over the only man with his penis insured for $1 million tweeted that Dior is “Another Spiegler gem.”

“She got a 11/10 from me,” Lee, who has performed in more 1350 sex scenes for Brazzers, tells AVN. “She was very quiet at first, but as the day progressed she seemed to relax and once the sex came around she was a different animal—even squirted in the process.”

Lee sees big potential in Dior. “A future contender for Female Performer of the Year, no doubt,” he adds. “If she keeps her head and listens to Spiegler’s advice, then I see no reason why she can’t be given this honor in the future.”

Dior says so far she has no complaints about doing porn.

“It’s all been really good,” she says. “I was really camera shy to begin with and I still kind of am. But I have seriously noticed a difference from my very first scene and now. I’m so much more comfortable. I just had to get used to it I guess. … There’s definitely still room for growth but I feel like I’m on the right track.”

Steve Holmes agrees. He says as soon as he got to Jules Jordan’s set where he met Dior, he had a feeling that day would be special.

“It’s hard to describe,” says Holmes, who started his porn career in 1996, one year before Dior was born. “Sometimes there is this kind of connection. We totally forgot about the shooting. It was very intense between her and me.”

Holmes tells AVN the seasoned gonzo shooter Jordan doesn’t interrupt the flow of scenes, letting the performers do what comes naturally and be themselves.

“It was especially good because Jules was shooting it,” Holmes notes. “As long as he gets what he wants he’s not going to stop you.”

The veteran deal-closer had “no clue” who Dior was before meeting her on the set.

“Jules never tells me who I will be shooting with,” Holmes says with a smile. “I never know what’s going to happen when I go to a Jules set. … Yes, it was a pleasant surprise to see Gianna—she is beautiful, obviously—but Jules doesn’t shoot with bad girls. He’s very selective and so is Spiegler.

“But she’s not only beautiful, she also has a very sweet personality. I’m looking forward to seeing the Jules scene.”

So is Dior.

“It was so good. It was really, really good,” she says. “Like you can tell. I feel like I have certain scenes where you can tell that I’m really, really into it. I feel like I’m into it all the time but there’s certain scenes where the chemistry is perfect.”

Dior continues, “I thought I was going to be weirded out because it was a whole daddy-fetish-type thing but I loved it. Because actually before I got into porn I had a sugar daddy. I had a few of them actually—like going back and forth. So I just had a thing for older guys and I was super excited.”

The September Penthouse Pet—she’s also the cover girl—watched her fair share of Pornhub and XVideos before getting into adult.

“I watched a lot of Riley Reid porn before I started,” Dior confesses. “I was obsessed with her. I’m still obsessed with her.”

She met the 2016 AVN Female Performer of the Year at a Pornhub party in July.

“I was like I can die peacefully now—I’ve met Riley,” Dior jokes. “I was like, ‘I have been masturbating to you since you started.’ I’ve been following her whole career. I saw her standing there and I was like ‘holy shit.’ I never thought that I would be in this position.”

She had also heard of fellow Spiegler Girls Asa Akira, Angela White and Karlee Grey before joining the roster.

“Once I saw who he represented I definitely felt a lot better about it and thought this is for real,” Dior says.

Without question, things have happened fast for Dior. It didn’t take long for her hometown of Andalusia, where she was known as “the school slut” in high school, to find out about her career move.

“There’s been a lot of talk because I’m from that tiny, tiny little town,” says Dior, who was raised by conservative parents who both were in the military. “It’s like front page of the newspaper pretty much. Actually, when everyone was starting to find out it was probably end of May. It was like right after my BangBus scene came out.

“I just knew that so many people were hearing about it. So I went on my personal Instagram and I posted a picture of me next to the BangBus with my BangBros hat on. I didn’t say anything specific but I was like, ‘I know that everyone already knows, so I’m just letting you know that this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Please mind your own business. Thank you for the support from my real friends and if you’re going to talk shit I don’t care.’

“I got a lot of hate mail after that but I was just like I don’t even care. I know people are going to talk shit. I’m doing this for me, not for ya’ll. I’m not going to have other people talking shit about me. I’m just going to come out and say it instead of keeping it a secret.”

When Dior is not on set, she likes to jog and read poetry.

“That’s one of my No. 1 things that I do. I don’t write it, I just read it. I wish I could write it,” Dior says, noting she enjoys the poetic writings of Ruby Carr, Hemingway and Bukowski.

“I love Hemingway, and Charles Bukowski is up there—probably No. 1. Poetry is one of my other passions. I love to travel, too. I’ll go anywhere and I haven’t even left the U.S. before though. I really want to visit every state first and then start my countries.”

One city she’d like to visit in the future is Santorini, Greece.

“That is my No. 1,” Dior says. “I want to go there. But I don’t have any plans on going. I feel like I need to be in the right place. And right now I’m kind of just exploring everywhere… I will eventually go…”

Speaking of things she would like to do someday, AVN Hall of Famer Mandingo comes to mind.

“When people think of big dicks they think of Mandingo. I feel like I can take it but I need to prepare myself mentally and physically,” Dior reveals. “I definitely want to work with Riley, Angela, Asa—all the ones that I was looking at before I started porn. I wasn’t really familiar with a lot of guys before I started doing porn. I was mostly fixated on the girls.

“I just loved them. Even Janice Griffith was one of my favorites. I remember one day she favorited one of my tweets. Me and my ex were like obsessed with her and I was freaking out. We would watch her videos all the time.”

One of Dior’s goals is to be a Vixen Angel, the monthly honor bestowed on one performer by three-time AVN Director of the Year Greg Lansky. Meanwhile, she says is committed to staying in porn long term.

“I love it. It makes me feel really good,” Dior concludes. “I feel liberated when I do it…I feel like this is what I’m supposed to do…I think I’m in a little bit of a different situation than the girls who do it just for money. Honestly, people hand me a check after I’m done shooting and I’m like oh shit, I forgot I was getting paid for this.”

She adds, “My main goal in life is to be happy. This makes me happy, so I’m going to do it until it doesn’t make me happy anymore. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’m super excited about the future.”

Photos by Keith Munyan