The only European director to gain the acclaim of American pornographers like Gerard Damiano, Anthony Spinelli and Alex DeRenzy, Lasse Braun was born in Algiers in 1936, the son of a diplomat. Like Sweden's Berthe Milton, he moved constantly but unlike the owner of Private he never learned to settle down. Braun spent WWII in Frankfurt am Main and Belgrade before returning to Italy. He attended the Leo XIII Jesuit college in Milan. "I've been interested in sex since I was seven years old," Braun says. "I've always loved sex and always masturbated." The priests expelled him. (From the 1988 book Porn Gold) Lasse got kicked out of another school before his father sent him to the elite Montana Zugerberg International Institute in the mountains above Zurich. Enjoying the permissive atmosphere, he sold copies of Hugh Hefner's nude Marilyn Monroe calendar to fellow students. After graduation, Lasse attended the Modern Philosophy School at the Sorbonne in Paris. He devoured the thought of existentialists like Sartre and Camus. "My philosophy is the philosophy of pleasure."