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The likes of Cicciolina, Ginger Lynn, etc (or even male stars) are wolrdwide famous stars in the biz. What qualities set pornstars apart from just actors/performers? In other words what makes a star?

Is it a physical quality (body), the performance, how willing they are to push the limits? A bit of luck? What is it?

A good agent?

Difficult question.
Porn (legit porn) has been around now for about 45 years or so.
Depends on the era that one wishes to analyze.
There were fewer male and female performers in the golden age. There was
no internet. In the beginning practically no official agency to speak of.
Some behind and front of the camera had legit mainstream experiences (cinema, stage,
modeling, etc). A lot was really word of mouth.
Someone placed an ad in a paper, people answered and were hired.
The handful of people that were there knew each other.

The 1980's brought a different outlook. It was the video age. People could purchase or rent movies on video cassette
and watch them at home. There were porn magazines that kept you abreast of
movies and porn stars. They made less movies, they earned much more.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was porn revolution in eastern
europe. American directors shot there (Collins, Stagliano) and there were locals like Pierre Woodman.
Private expanded their opeartions and shot everywhere.

In the USA a number of large outfits (Vivid, etrc) started to put certain bankable stars
under contract (1 year, 2 years, 5 years). There were flashy Awards.
The internet was bringing nmore players.

By the late 1990's DVD came into play, supposedly making the product cheaper, but there was a big glut
(people spoke of over 10,000 titles releasded in a single year). Impossible to digest all that.
A number of porn pergformers became superstars and media stars (Jenna Jameson, etc).

The bubble burst around 2008 with the world economy in turmoil and so went porn, file sharing and
tube sites making evon more porn available to the masses.

I believe it would be extremely difficult to duplicate the carrer of someone like Jenna
Jameson today. And yet she did no anals, no DP, no IR, no gangbangs. Only vanilla work.

There are hardly any female performers today under contract. A lot of th large outfits hardly produce
and release any new stuff (DVD).

What sets apart a pornstar, you ask? You would have to set a date to provide an accurate response.
Physical quality above all, a nice unusual name, being able to co-star with bankcable and kbnown
performers. The money is not there any more, and a lot of po0rn performers escvort.
So the porn movie businesds has radically changed. And even working for a great agent
would probably not elevate you to the level that once was a porn perfoprmer.
Porn performers are very disposable, and when you are not under contract you don't have an outfit
that is behind you, that markets you, that feeds you, and pays your rent.
That you do anals, double and triple anals while doing cartwheels will not make you more famous or
more popular, and whether you win some "prestigious" award will not put more
bread on the table.

I think directors are really important. I love some of the european porn stars like Laura Angel or Nikki Anderson (well back in the days), but when i see them in boring american movies even better looks or acting won't help too much...Being the ''porn star'' is not that important, there's bunch of hungarian hotties who made like 20 movies and vanished, those girls are much better than some bigger names...But then again there's amazing porn stars like Luana Borgia, Moana Pozzi, Sandrine Van Herpe or Debora Coeur, im my opinion they all worked with great directors and made some great movies...

Without mentioning some names or titles, hard to figure out why you consider directors so important.
I imagine you are referring to (euro) directors who were working in the 1990's,
and making plot-driven movies.
Most were journeymen who just pointed a camera at something/someone.
Very few have impressed in that period of time.

Because i can't remember great movie that isn't directed by Christoph Clark or Luca Damiano, Joe D'amato, G. Pontello. Maybe it isnt all about directors, but i think they contribute alot. Porn star itself isnt too much, yes there's certain girls that have talents, but nothing without whole package...

C. Clark was as a director and actor a rather bland journeyman.
Luca Damiano did some funny "fairy tale" and period spoofs which were occasionally very funny
and entertaining.
Joe D'amato was a hack.
G. Pontello, really I don't know. Of what I saw I was not impressed with (as actor or director)
The only director that impressed me a bit in the 1980-1990's was perhaps Michel Ricaud.
He was essentially offbeat without being offensive or really outrageous.

I think you both made some good points.
While porn is always essentially ephemeral, IMO it was less so in the early
80s/mid 90s - and that's when most of the 'stars' were made. I also think it
important to distinguish between 'stars' and girls who are just very popular -
maybe in the sense of being [in some degree] manufactured, or not.

A good director can add to a girl's appeal - just as bad ones can render her
anonymous. I weep for the thousands of scenes that could have been minor
classics, but were ruined by incompetent or lazy behind-the-scenes people.

The 'contract' thing [in my view] tended to ruin a girl, as the studio would
seek to recoup the investment by putting her in everything - Jenna J being
a case in point... although I'd rather trim my nails with a buzz-saw than
watch late-90s Vivid stuff, anyway.

Most of my faves would be in LBF's 20-or-fewer category. About the only [more
prolific] 'stars' I can think of that I'd watch in almost anything would be
Anita Blond, Marilyn Jess and Jane Baker* - and I'm not even sure the last
would qualify as 'star'. The one thing that trio has in common for me, is
'presence'- even my sclerotic old ticker gives a happy wheeze at the sight
of one of them : -)

*An odd thing, that - my general preference is for brunettes. Go figure....

Laurablackfan earlier indicated that porn directors are really important in the porn genre.
Beyond the golden age and up to easrly 1980, when they were really
professional, had usually large budget to work with (any where from $100,000-$150,000) by
the early 1980's, took 2-3 weeks to shoot a movie, took several months to edit it together,
even had a good script, by the time of the video revolution inthe mid 1980's when the average
shot-on-viodeo movie cost well under $20,000, porn directors were just guys pointi a camera
at a couch or bed.

By the time the early 1990's rolled by, porn was pretty dreadful until such time
as Private began to invest big money and using exotic locations on 2-or even 3 parters, and Andrew Blake
began the arty-fartsy trend in the USA, which got pretty absurd in a flash.

All you would hear is such and such a porn performer land a coveted 1 or 2 year contract and Vivid and VCA took forever
to release a movie (sometime up to a year and more after production). Vivid started to butcher and massacre
their movie porn library by releasing edited and chopped up versions of their old movies to a new generation
of porn "consumers" (who had no idea what the original movie was).

The gonzo and all-sex style took over, with even rougher sex. But this trip ended with
the economic crash of a half a dozen years ago. Old age directors either left or were let go, contract
performers released, certain associations chipped away at the porn industry porn by enacting
and reinforcing condom use and obtention of shooting permits.

Who the heck even remembers the hundreds of porn directors who were active in the 1980's,
1990's, and in the last decade or so? What made them so distinct from one another?
If you removed the credits from one of those movies, I would wager hardly anyone would be able
to say: "Oh for sure that is the work of director XYZ".

A lot of porn actors and actresses started to move behind the camera, but
that hardly improved the situation. For the most part the director did double duty in both
director by directing and even apearing in the sex scenes (how else could you reduce
the cost of filming and at the same time get youself some free pussy?). To a large extent
the director-actor was basically a vanity factor (even if he did not have sex, he had to appear in
the movie).

And when certain directors keep putting the same unpleasant male performers either in non-sex
or barely sex roles in their movies, it really cheapens not only their product but their
craft as well. And are porn consumers that stupid to really go for all that?

Good points, guys.

Yea, I was referring to the '80s and '90s mostly.

So, where's the money in the biz now? Are we gonna see porn games for computer and video consoles? 3D and 4D entertainment?

With the advent of the internet, plot-driven videos seem to scarce now. It's more about scenes for the web. Italians seem to still make stories, though.