Tabatha Cash (born Céline Barbe on December 27, 1973, in Saint Denis, France) is a former French pornographic actress who starred in the early 1990s, starring in over 100 adult movies and appearing on countless magazine covers. Her exotic looks and enthusiastic on-screen performances made her one of the most popular performers with audiences in Europe.
She was born into a poor working class family. As a teenager, she was involved with a notorious gang leader and also served time in a youth prison. Seeking a way to make money and get out of the ghetto, she turned to nude modeling while still in school and found that she could earn more money than in a regular job. Appropriately she took the name "Cash" and, using false identity papers to disguise her age, began working in the adult industry at the age of 17. The same year, she became a lover of French neo-Nazi leader Serge Ayoub. She also worked as a photomodel, appearing in various kinds of magazines. She has a tattoo of a rose (formerly a triskelion) on her right breast.
She falsely claimed to be half-Japanese, half-Italian (in a casting video back in 1991 she tells that her father is Japanese and her mother is Swedish!) to create an exotic appeal – she is half-French, half-African. In fact, her biographical remarks are sprinkled with falsifications. She also claimed to have studied law at University of Paris II: Panthéon-Assas, another assertion she could never confirm.
After working in porn for four years in the U.S. and France, and receiving several Hot d'Or, she quit at what was perhaps the height of her fame. After leaving the industry she was highly critical of it, claiming that working in porn was just the same as being a prostitute only with a camera present, and further saying that the male performers were "all stupid" and the women were "all horrible."
On leaving the industry she has tried to use her popularity to propel herself into more mainstream situations. She has worked on TV (Canal+) and radio (Skyrock) in France, married a porn magazine publisher named Franck Vardon in 1995 and has also appeared in one mainstream movie, Raï, playing a young Algerian woman, but soon after withdrew from public life.
