Sola Aoi

Sola Aoi (蒼井 そら) is a Japanese former AV idol, nude model, and film and television actress.

Aoi was voted into 53rd place in the balloting.

Sora Aoi was born on April 26, 1981, in Kanagawa.

As a student, she worked at various part-time jobs in the food-service industry, such as pizza parlors, pubs and sushi bars with the intent of becoming a pre-school teacher.

While in her third year in high school, Aoi was scouted in Shibuya by a talent agency for gravure modelling.

She decided to enter the adult entertainment industry with the aim of eventually working on TV and in other parts of the entertainment industry, stating that "If there was only the AV industry, I couldn't do it."

When asked how her stage name was chosen, Aoi explained: "My agency asked what color I liked. I said blue [Aoi in Japanese]. He also asked what I like in general. I said sky [sora in Japanese]. So, he chose Aoi Sora."

Starring in more than 600 adult films between 2002 and 2011, Aoi is widely considered one of the most famous AV idols of the 2000s, with her popularity as an adult video actress leading to celebrity status as a media personality both in Japan and abroad.

Aoi appeared as a gravure idol in the June 2002 issue of Bejean and then made her debut in adult videos (AV) in July 2002, with Happy Go Lucky! for the Alice Japan studio, part of the Kuki Inc. group which was one of Japan's largest producers of pornography at the time.

The next month, she appeared in the AV The Blue Sky on the Samansa label for the Max-A studio, also part of the Kuki group.

For her video appearances in 2002, Aoi was awarded the Second Place Award as Best New Actress in the 2002 X City Grand Prix Awards.

Entitled The Naked Body, this June 2003 release was an "image video", which has nude modeling but features no sex.

During this period, Aoi also started making appearances in mainstream media.

In May 2003, she had a role in the theatrical release Gun Crazy 4: Requiem for a Bodyguard and from July to December 2003, Aoi had a role in the TV Asahi J-dorama Tokumei Kakarichō Tadano Hitoshi.

Aoi continued making videos for both Alice Japan and Max-A for almost two-and-a-half years until late 2004.

While continuing to perform in hardcore AVs, Aoi also appeared in the first video release of the Shuffle company's new label Believe.

For her starring role in the pink film, Tsumugi (制服美少女　先生あたしを抱いて), released to theaters in July 2004, Aoi was given a Best Actress Award at the 2004 Pink Grand Prix ceremony.

The film was ranked the fourth-best pink film release of the year.

Aoi also starred in the October 2004 release of the manga-based theatrical thriller Stop the Bitch Campaign: Hell Version.

In November 2004, Aoi left Alice Japan and Max-A to move to the newly formed studio, S1 No. 1 Style, part of the large Hokuto Corporation.

Her first video for S1, Sell Debut, was directed by Hideto Aki and released on November 11, 2004.

Her name was the second most popular internet search on a female celebrity in Japan for 2005.

Aoi's popularity enabled her to enter further into mainstream entertainment, including film, television and radio.

In early 2005, she starred as a high-school girl in director Keisuke Yoshida's film Raw Summer (なま夏).

The romantic comedy, released theatrically in Japan in January 2005, won the Grand Prize in the Off Theater Competition at the 2006 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival where it was screened in February 2005.

Along with another AV idol, Akiho Yoshizawa, Aoi appeared in the late-night TV Tokyo manga-based production Jōō (嬢王) which aired in 12 episodes from October to December 2005.

Aoi continued making about one video a month for S1 until mid-2006.

By this time, Aoi had become one of the most popular AV idols in Japan.

By 2006, Aoi was appearing regularly on television, often appearing on variety shows and acting in several dramas including the 2006 midnight-drama Shimokita GLORY DAYS (下北GLORY DAYS) along with fellow S1 actresses Yuma Asami and Honoka and singer-actress Aya Sugimoto.

Aoi plays the character "Nozomi Ichimonji" in the manga-based series about a ronin student moving to Tokyo and sharing a house with several beautiful women.

She was also cast in the TV Asahi midnight drama Kaikan shokunin (快感職人) which aired from July to September 2006, and in late 2007 she was a guest star on the popular J-dorama detective show Galileo (ガリレオ).

Aoi remained at S1, but her work in adult videos became irregular after mid-2006.

As a singer, Aoi put out a CD in 2006 titled "Hadaka no Kiss".

According to one reviewer of the June 2007 DVD release of the film: "The acting proves that Sora Aoi is no Dame Judi Dench but she is winsome enough to make you believe and care for her."

One of her S1 videos, Hyper Risky Mosaic – Special Bath House Tsubaki, with 11 other S1 actresses won the First Place Award at the 2007 AV Open contest.

Aoi later returned in a special guest appearance for the 2009 sequel to the show Jōō Virgin (嬢王　Virgin).

In another venue, Aoi was one of several AV actresses asked by a small Japanese publisher to take photographs of themselves as "if the [toy] cameras [were] their boyfriends or undetestable stalkers".

The result, Polgasun Aoisora, was warmly received by a reviewer for the journal European Photography, who wrote, "It would appear that in Polgasun she is trying to swap the wretchedness and banality of the pornography genre for intimacy and authenticity."

In July 2011, S1 released a new work, Mega Semem Bukkake Facial, but since then the studio has only published compilation videos for Aoi through late 2013.

The major Japanese adult video distributor DMM held a poll of its customers in late 2012 to choose the 100 all-time best AV actresses to celebrate the 30th anniversary of adult videos in Japan.