UK [theargus.co.uk]- With a university degree, striking looks and an ambition to work with disadvantaged children, Melissa Walker appeared to have a bright future.

But yesterday the glamorous blonde was put behind bars as her descent from model student to one of Britain’s top porn film stars was revealed for the first time.

In an incredible tale of greed, lust and drugs, Walker, 26, was jailed for two and half years for plunging an ornamental dagger into the chest of her lover.

Sporting an expensive designer trouser suit, fake tan and false eyelashes, she looked stunned as a jury found her guilty of the vicious attack at her flat in Hove.

She was led to the cells in handcuffs after Judge Richard Brown at Lewes Crown Court said she had shown no remorse.

After she was sentenced it emerged that Walker earned thousands of pounds as one of the country’s most prolific porn stars, featuring in more than 90 blue movies.

It was the second time she had stood trial for the stabbing, after which her boyfriend Matthew Quant had to be revived three times.

At a previous trial at Brighton Crown Court last November the jury was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

But at the end of the sevenday second trial the jury unanimously found her guilty.

The jury heard Walker plunged the blade into Mr Quant without warning during a row fuelled by drink and cocaine.

Mr Quant, a scaffolder, from Bevendean, Brighton, told the court she had an “evil look” on her face as she jumped out from behind a door and stabbed him at her flat in Denmark Villas, Hove, on November 19, 2005.

He said on the night of the stabbing a row started because they lost the last of their cocaine, worth £250.

He said she became hysterical and was screaming and shouting as she searched the flat. He was trying to calm her down but when he went to the toilet she hid behind the living room door and jumped out and stabbed him without warning.

Immediately after the attack Mr Quant collapsed and Walker rang the police to get help.

Walker, who grew up in a respectable family, was a bright child who started school a year early and went on to take her GCSEs and A-levels early too.

She studied sociology at a university in London and moved to Hove after she graduated. She had planned to become a youth worker and attended a post graduate course at a college in Canterbury.

But Walker was struggling financially and started working as a stripper. Soon, it became her full-time occupation.

On the night of the attack, she said they had rowed because he wouldn’t help her with the bedclothes and he then became violent, so she grabbed the knife, which was on the floor because she was in the process of packing to move out, and jabbed him in self-defence.

She said: “I was being punched repeatedly in the back of my head. I was really scared.

I needed to do something to get him off me.”

Judge Brown said: “People who are fuelled up with cocaine and alcohol tend to act violently.

The victim came pretty close to death. She has shown no remorse.”

Mr Quant was not in court to see the jury return their verdict.

Walker’s parents sat in the public gallery weeping openly as their daughter was led from the dock to the cells.