Sunny Leone Turns 42: A Look At ‘Jism 2’ Star’s Myriad Controversies & Investment Portfolio!

Leone’s birth name is Karenjit Kaur Vohra. She was born on May 13, 1981 in Ontario, Canada to Punjabi Sikh parents.

Although it is rather difficult to believe it today, Leone was a tomboy in her childhood. In a 2016 interview with LA Times, she said she was a “self described tomboy” with mismatched clothes and a unibrow. She often played street hokey and loved GI Joes.

In an interview with adult website Brazzers, she revealed that she came out as bisexual (a person who is attracted to both male and female genders) at the age of 18

Before her stint in the adult film industry, Leone worked at a German bakery, a Jiffy Lube store, and at a tax and retirement firm. She also enrolled in a nurse training programme.

Leone’s net worth in 2024 is considered to be an impressive $14 million or Rs 98 crore. The actress is known to charge Rs 2-3 crore per movie.

The actresses’s cruelty-free make-up brand Starstruck has an annual turnover of Rs 10 crore according to a CNBCTV18 report. She also owns a perfume brand called Affeto Frangrances, which are sold over 500 outlets in India. In 2021, she invested in PETA-backed leisure brand ‘I Am Animal’. She also owns another wellness brand called Rize Bars, as well as a restaurant called Chica Loca. The resto-bar opened in Noida on Jnauary 2024. She is also co-owns a media company called ‘Suncity Media & Entertainment along with husband Daniel Weber.

As per a report from Business Insider, the Bollywood actress collaborated with Gamiana Digital Entertainment, an online game development company, back in 2018 to introduce her own online game titled Teen Patti. This game offers users the chance to blend Bollywood with the traditional card game Teen Patti, enabling them to create personalized private tables for a distinctive gaming encounter.

Leone made her debut as a writer in 2019. She teamed up with Juggernaut Books founder Chiki Sarkar and ventured in to written content space with a book ‘Sweet Dreams’. The book had 12 short erotic stories.

In 2021, as reported by the Economic Times, Leone made history by becoming the first Indian actress to invest in digital assets and create her own NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Following the minting of her NFTs, named Misfitz, Leone introduced her own e-platform, I Dream of Sunny. This platform enables users to purchase NFT cards online, allowing them to engage in weekly games hosted on the website.

She is left-handed.

Before marrying Daniel Weber, she dated stand-up comedian Russell Peters and Matt Erikson, the VP of Playboy Enterprises.

With fame, cometh the controversies. In May 2015, a police first information report was lodged against Leone in Mumbai, India, following a complaint from a woman who alleged that Leone's website, sunnyleone.com, was undermining Indian culture. The Thane police's cyber cell at Ramnagar registered a case against her under sections 292, 292A, and 294, which could have resulted in imprisonment, fines, or both. Senior police inspector JK Sawant remarked, "We are unable to block the website, but we will request the operator to eliminate objectionable content."

During the New Year celebrations in 2017, a pro-Kannada group called Rakshana Vedike Yuva Sene staged a protest against the event "Sunny Night in Bengaluru NYE 2018" in Bangalore, Karnataka, where Leone was scheduled to perform. They argued that she should have been barred from the event due to her past involvement in pornography. The demonstrators even threatened to stage a mass suicide. As a result, Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy denied permission for Leone to participate in the event.


Producer and distributor Bharat Patel has alleged that Leone failed to return a signing fee that was paid to her for agreeing to perform a special dance number in his film Patel Ki Punjabi Shaadi after her role was ultimately canceled.