Aja (July 14, 1963 – September 18, 2006) was the stage name of an American pornographic actress, adult film director, and exotic dancer. Aja starred in director John Leslie's Adult Video News' Best Video of the Year award-winning Mad Love (1988) in a scene described as "notably [...] surreal" by author and Ohio University Telecommunications graduate studies director Joseph W. Slade. AVN later declared the film one of the 500 best of all time, also describing Aja's scene as "strange"; she starred in two others among their 500 best, Alex deRenzy's Ghostess with the Mostess and Paul Thomas' The Naked Stranger, all in her first year as a performer, winning AVN's "Best New Starlet" in 1989. In 1990, she starred in director Sharon Kane's Stairway to Paradise, a film that was the subject of a study by University of California, Los Angeles pro...