She may be no rocket scientist, but then nor is she a bimbo.It is easy to understand the temptation of pounds 200 modelling jobs for teenage girls but, for Sinclair, whose family was comfortably off, glamour had more profound attractions. "We lived in a totally white area and we were the only black family living in that area at the time. At school I had a lot of hassle because of my colour and got called names and stuff; the other girls were all blonde and blue-eyed and the boys used to chase them, so my way of fitting in was to become one of the boys and play football. I think that was why I was always so insecure about the way I looked - because I was always so different from everybody else, and I didn't think that anybody would actually like me."When Sinclair was approached to do glamour work it was the first time she felt she had been treated as a woman, not simply the odd one out. "They were making me feel a way I hadn't felt before; that I did fit in, that I wasn't so different It appealed to me When you are young you like to hear those things. I fell for it hook, line and sinker, really."Although she says she will never regret getting into the industry, there was much that Sinclair admits she wishes she hadn't done in that early period, not least the hardcore work which she now feels is stopping her move into a more respectable career.

"I was 18, and I had left home and moved in with my fiance," she says. "We got evicted from our flat and we were living in a caravan. It was the middle of winter, it was snowing and the pipes froze. We couldn't flush the toilet, we couldn't shower, we couldn't wash - it was a pit! We might has well have lived on the street."Bills were mounting up and it was just too much for me to deal with at that age. Then somebody came along and said I could be paid this certain amount to do a hardcore film.

They made it look and seem and feel to me that everybody was doing it, there was nothing wrong with it and that that was the way to get the money. They said I could do it with my fiance at the time and we both discussed it. We were both young and stupid, so we did it."The experience was not a pleasant one. "I felt like my last piece of privacy was taken away from me," Sinclair admits. "I felt like I went too far; the only place I felt safe had been invaded and I didn't want to repeat that experience. As the years went on I started to realise that it was the wrong thing to do, and that it was going to come back and haunt me one day.

Which it has."As well as the stigma of hardcore, Sinclair was also having to fight the issue of race within the industry. Porn has lagged behind mainstream magazines in its introduction of black and Asian models - many start off, but few have the energy to push themselves beyond inclusion as token "exotic" colour when editorial tastes are so doggedly European.She is proud to have proved that you don't have to be blonde to make a big name for yourself - not as any kind of race representative (there was no politics involved in her career decisions, she says, she doesn't think that way), but proud in her dogged determination and ambition, the feeling that nothing should hold her back, that she could make it by herself.Unfortunately, Sinclair's independence was shattered when the news of her relationship with Robert de Niro hit the tabloids. She was rewritten as a high class hooker, and a ruthless opportunist. What Sinclair resents most about the whole affair is that, five years later, it seems to be the one thing people remember her for."Even if I meet fans, the first thing they ask is `What was de Niro like?' Well, he's only a human being, he's only a man; it's like someone going out with the bloke from the greengrocers, there is no difference just because he is in the public eye. What people forget is that I already had a good name for myself then, but it's all they seem to be interested in."The damaging coverage she received at the time was symptomatic of the negative attitudes she has continued to face throughout her career.