Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann (born August 23, 1938), known professionally as Viva, is an American actress, writer and former Warhol superstar.

[1] Viva was born in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Mary Alice (née McNicholas) and Wilfred Ernest Hoffmann.

She retired from both professions, claiming that she believed painting to be a dead medium, and describing her time as a model as "...a period of my life I would rather forget.

The first, Tub Girls, consists of Viva lying in a bathtub with various people of both sexes, including Brigid Berlin and Rosen McGrath.

[5] She appeared in Bike Boy, a film about a motorcyclist trying to find himself;[6] and The Nude Restaurant, in which she played a waitress, opposite Taylor Mead.

[7] By far, Viva's most controversial role was in Blue Movie (1969), a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn that helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon in modern American culture.

The film consists of improvised dialogue between Viva and Waldon about a multitude of topics, including the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, and various mundane tasks.

These conversations are interrupted by the main event of the film, in which Viva and Waldon perform sexual acts in front of the camera.

Returning from the hospital, however, Warhol accused Viva of utilizing his absence to spy on his work and his mother, creating a rift in a relationship that was never repaired.

We’d spend a summer at Gore Vidal’s house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare.”[21] Viva wrote a book about her daughter titled Gaby at the Chelsea, a riff on Eloise at the Plaza, as yet unpublished.