Lilly Bell
Nominated for the biggest prize in the business four years running. Only two women in AVN history have been nominated more.
Lilly Bell began performing in 2019, at twenty-three. In 2023 AVN nominated her for Female Performer of the Year. It nominated her again in 2024. And in 2025. And in 2026. Four consecutive years in the final shortlist for the most contested title in the industry — a run that puts her behind only Angela White, with nine nominations, and Riley Reid, with seven, in the entire history of the award. She has not won it. She lost to Kira Noir, then Vanna Bardot, then Anna Claire Clouds, then Jennifer White. Two of those four are elsewhere on this site. She does win things — an AVN in 2026 for Best Solo/Tease Performance, an XRCO in 2023 — but she has now stood in that room four times while somebody else's name was read out, and gone back to work every time. That's the career. It's a better story than winning would have been.
Four Years in the Shortlist
The AVN Award for Female Performer of the Year has existed since 1993. In thirty-three years, exactly two performers have been nominated more times than Lilly Bell: Angela White, who has nine nominations and won three of them, and Riley Reid, who has seven. Bell has four, all consecutive, from 2023 to 2026 — a record she shares with Blake Blossom and nobody else. To be nominated once is a career highlight. To be nominated four years running means the industry's voters have looked at the entire field, every single year since 2023, and put her among the handful of people who could plausibly be the best working. It also means she has watched the trophy go somewhere else four times: to Kira Noir in 2023, Vanna Bardot in 2024, Anna Claire Clouds in 2025, Jennifer White in 2026. She was on the shortlist for all of them. She's on it again next time, presumably, because that's what the last four years suggest.
More Than a Public Persona
It would be wrong to file her under near-misses, because the rest of the record is real. At the 2026 AVN Awards she took Best Solo/Tease Performance for The Secrets We Share — a Pure Taboo release that also earned her a Best Actress nomination, meaning the same production got her recognised for both acting and solo work in one cycle. In 2023 the XRCO gave its Best Release award to Going Up, a fourteen-performer ensemble she shared with Casey Calvert, Anna Claire Clouds, Kira Noir, Victoria Voxxx, Seth Gamble and eight others — two of whom you'll find on this site. AVN nominated her for Best Leading Actress in 2024 for Trouble and again in 2025 for Last Splash, an Erika Lust production, which is a specific kind of credential: Lust's work is where the industry goes when it wants to be taken seriously as cinema. Her 2025 Best Anal Sex Scene nomination she shares with Mick Blue, also on this site. All told: three wins and seventeen nominations across AVN, XBIZ and XRCO in six years.
Presence
Four consecutive Female Performer of the Year nominations is not a fluke of one year's taste — it's the same verdict, from the same voting body, four times in a row. Fans nominated her for Favorite Female Porn Star as well, which is a separate constituency arriving at the same conclusion. Whatever the quality is that makes a room decide someone might be the best in the business, she has produced it consistently enough that they keep having the argument about her.
Range
Best Leading Actress nominations two years running, for Trouble and then for Last Splash, an Erika Lust film. An AVN win for solo work. An XRCO for a fourteen-person ensemble. A scene nomination alongside Mick Blue. She's been recognised for acting, for solo performance, for ensemble work and for scene work — which is why the Performer of the Year nominations keep coming, since that award is explicitly a measure of the whole body of work rather than any one piece of it.
Momentum
Her most recent AVN win is from 2026 and her most recent Female Performer of the Year nomination is from 2026. Nothing about this career is winding down; if anything the acting nominations are getting more serious. She's six years in, still on the shortlist, still without the one award that would settle it. That's a live question with a real answer coming, and she's the only person who can say what it's like to be inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this performer?
Lilly Bell is an American adult film performer who began working in 2019. She has been nominated for AVN's Female Performer of the Year in four consecutive years — 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 — a total exceeded by only two performers in the award's history. She won an AVN in 2026 for Best Solo/Tease Performance for the Pure Taboo release The Secrets We Share, and an XRCO in 2023 as part of the ensemble for Going Up. She holds three wins and seventeen nominations across AVN, XBIZ and XRCO.
Where is this performer from?
She's American, and the available record points to the Portland, Oregon area, where she reportedly grew up and went to school. Beyond that she's kept her background largely to herself — there's no substantial published account of her early life that came from her, and the sites offering one are filling gaps rather than reporting. What's on the record is the work, which starts in 2019.
How did this performer get started?
She entered the industry in 2019, at twenty-three — not a teenager, and old enough to have had a life beforehand that she chose to leave. Within four years she was on the shortlist for Female Performer of the Year, and she's been on it every year since. That's a fast trajectory by any measure, and it happened without a viral moment or a breakout scandal. She just worked.
What is this performer known for?
For four straight Female Performer of the Year nominations at the AVN Awards, a run only Angela White and Riley Reid have bettered in thirty-three years of the award. For her acting — Best Leading Actress nominations in 2024 for Trouble and 2025 for Last Splash, an Erika Lust production. For The Secrets We Share, the Pure Taboo release that won her an AVN for Best Solo/Tease Performance in 2026 and got her nominated for Best Actress in the same cycle. And for Going Up, the ensemble that took XRCO's Best Release in 2023.
Has this performer won any awards?
Yes — three wins against seventeen nominations. She won the AVN Award for Best Solo/Tease Performance in 2026 for The Secrets We Share – Scene 5, from Pure Taboo. She shared the XRCO's 2023 Best Release award for Going Up with a cast including Casey Calvert, Anna Claire Clouds, Kira Noir and Victoria Voxxx. Her nominations include Female Performer of the Year in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, Best Leading Actress in 2024 and 2025, Best Anal Sex Scene in 2025 alongside Mick Blue, and Favorite Female Porn Star from AVN's fan vote.
Does this performer work behind the camera as well?
Not on the public record as a director. The clearest evidence of her reach beyond straight performance is the acting: two consecutive AVN Best Leading Actress nominations, one of them for an Erika Lust film, plus a Best Actress nomination for The Secrets We Share in the same year she won its solo award. Those are roles that require carrying a production, not appearing in one. Whether she wants to direct is a question worth putting to someone who's been in the industry's top tier for four years and hasn't yet been asked it.
What makes this performer a compelling interview subject?
Because she can describe something almost nobody else can. Four years in a row, the industry has told her she might be the best performer working — and four years in a row, she's sat in that room and heard a different name. Only two women in the history of the award have been nominated more often, and both of them won. She's kept working through it, kept getting better, kept collecting acting nominations, and won her own AVN in 2026 for something else entirely. Whatever it takes to do that — to be told you're almost the best, annually, and go back to set — is a real thing, and she's the person who knows what it is.
Where can viewers follow this performer’s journey?
She maintains an active presence on social media, and her recent work is available through Pure Taboo, Brazzers and Erika Lust's productions. The Secrets We Share, her 2026 AVN-winning release, is the best single place to see what the voters keep responding to. Her full conversation is here on The Making Of A Spiegler Girl, where she appears among the series' interview subjects.
