Traci Elizabeth Lords (born Nora Louise Kuzma; May 7, 1968) is an American actress, singer and former adult film actress. Following her departure from the adult film industry, she pursued an acting career, appearing in Cry-Baby (1990) and later in films, including Skinner (1993), Virtuosity (1995), Blade (1998), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and Excision (2012), for which she received the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Fright Meter Award and the CinEuphoria Award. She has also appeared in television series, including Roseanne, Melrose Place, Profiler, and First Wave.
Lords recorded "Love Never Dies" for the soundtrack of Pet Sematary Two (1992) before signing with Radioactive Records and releasing her debut studio album, 1000 Fires (1995). Its lead single, "Control", peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart. A remix was included on the soundtrack to Mortal Kombat (1995), which was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
While still a minor, Lords used forged identity documents to enter the adult film industry. After her true age was revealed in 1986, most of the adult films in which she had appeared were withdrawn from distribution in the United States because they constituted child pornography. In 2003, she published her autobiography, Traci Lords: Underneath It All, which debuted at number 31 on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Early life
Traci Lords was born Nora Louise Kuzma on May 7, 1968, in Steubenville, Ohio, to Louis and Patricia Kuzma. Her father was of Ukrainian descent, while her mother was of Irish ancestry. Louis was employed as a steelworker. Lords has one elder sister and two younger sisters. Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and Lords moved with her mother and three sisters to her great-grandmother's house. Following the divorce, her alcoholic, abusive father got partial custody. Around that same time, her mother enrolled at the College of Steubenville, now the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and became employed part-time.
In her autobiography, Traci Lords: Underneath It All, Lords recounts being raped by a 16-year-old boy she had a crush on when she was 10. She later described it as "the single most traumatizing thing that ever happened to me in my life." When Lords was 13, she moved with her sisters, her mother, and her mother's new boyfriend (who Lords refers to in her book by the name Roger Hays) to Redondo Beach, California. She did not see her father for many years after. In September 1982, she began attending Redondo Union High School but dropped out at age 15 to enter the porn industry. During her early school years, Lords developed a rebellious attitude, and was often angry at her mother. Although Hays, a cocaine dealer, initially treated her and the family well, he began entering Lords's bedroom at night and molesting her in her sleep. After her mother broke up with Hays due to his frequent drug use, her mother began dating Hays's friend, who offered to let the family temporarily live with him. Lords refused to follow them to a new place and her mother left her behind with her older sister Lorraine. Her mother and two younger sisters eventually found a new apartment.
Career 1984–1986: Start of career At age 15, Lords became pregnant by her high school boyfriend. Afraid of her mother's reaction, she went to Hays for help, who arranged for her to have an abortion without her mother's knowledge. Living mostly on her own, Lords needed a job but struggled to find work due to her age, so Hays helped her get a fake ID and a stolen birth certificate - in the name Kristie Nussman - which added five years to her age. After applying to several jobs with no success, in February 1984 she answered a newspaper advertisement for Jim South's World Modeling Talent Agency. Posing as her stepfather, Hays drove her to the agency. Lords believed she was answering an ad for a normal modeling job, but once she arrived South asked her to get naked. According to Lords, after South gave her some champagne and cocaine, she agreed.
After signing a contract, she began working as a nude model and appeared in magazines such as Velvet, Juggs, and Club. That August, when she was selected to model for Penthouse magazine's 15th-anniversary issue, she was told she needed a "sexy" stage name; she chose Traci, a name she had wanted growing up, and took Lords from the actor Jack Lord, as she was fan of the television series Hawaii Five-O. In her book, she writes, "I added an 's' to Lord because there were three of us: Nora (my birth name), Kristie (my fake ID name), and now Traci (the girl everyone wanted)."
Lords, still only 15 years old, made her first porn movie in 1984, when she appeared in What Gets Me Hot! alongside Tom Byron, who later became her boyfriend offscreen.Jennings, David. (2000). Skinflicks: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry. AuthorHouse. . Google Book Search. Retrieved on March 14, 2015. In her next movie, Those Young Girls, she appeared in a sex role alongside Harry Reems and Ginger Lynn. After appearing with John Leslie in the porno parody Talk Dirty to Me Part III which won the AVN Award for the best movie, Lords was hailed as the "Princess of Porn". She became one of the highest-paid porn actresses of that time, earning more than $1,000 a day.
Besides her work in porn, she also appeared in the music video for "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" by the heavy metal band Helix. Lords continued making more movies until late 1984 when she tried to quit the industry at age 16, but returned a few months later. Before her 17th birthday, she met Stuart Dell, who became her boyfriend, manager, and business partner, under the pseudonym Steven (or Stephen) Cartier, and they formed the Traci Lords Company together. Dell and Lords made a distribution deal with Sy Adler, an industry veteran who ran Vantage International, in which they would produce three movies for the company. In March 1986, the first TLC feature was released, titled Traci Takes Tokyo, which was shot in Tokyo around Christmas Day 1985. The second, Beverly Hills Copulator, was released afterwards, but the third movie, Screamer, was shelved."The Traci Lords Story" . She: Revolutionary Tough Girl Culture. Retrieved on March 14, 2015.
In May 1986, around three weeks after Lords's 18th birthday, authorities were informed that she had been underage when she appeared in the porn movies and that she had lied to law enforcement, photographers, producers, directors, co-workers, and the general public. The owners of her movie agency and X-Citement Video, Inc. were arrested and charged. She was taken into protective custody and hired lawyer Leslie Abramson. On July 10, district attorney's investigators searched Lords's Redondo Beach home as well as the Sun Valley offices of Vantage International Productions and the Sherman Oaks offices of modeling agent Jim South. South and other industry officials said that Lords, when seeking employment, had provided a California driver's license, a U.S. passport, and a birth certificate which stated that her name was Kristie Nussman and gave her birth date as November 17, 1962.Palermo, Dave. "Sex Films Pulled; Star Allegedly Too Young", Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1986. Investigators were able to locate the real Kristie Nussman, who said that her birth certificate had been stolen a few years earlier. Two adults who knew Lords, but who requested anonymity, said they saw her picture in the adult magazine Velvet during July 1984 and telephoned the district attorney's office to inform authorities that she was underage, but that an investigator told them they couldn't take action.Soble, Ronald L. and Feldman, Paul. "Sex Film Star Not Facing Charges, Reiner Says", Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1986.Murphy, Kim. "U.S. Loses Round in Traci Lords Case", Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1988.
On July 17, 1986, video rental shops and adult movie theaters in the U.S. had to remove from their inventory all hardcore material featuring Lords to avoid prosecution for distributing child pornography. John Weston, attorney for the Adult Film Association of America, said distributors should withdraw any movie made before May 1986 that featured Lords in sexual conduct. The withdrawal of Lords's movies from the market cost the industry millions of dollars.Polman, Dick. "Traci Lords: Fallout From A Porn Scandal", The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 25, 1986. Government prosecutors declared that Lords was a victim of a manipulative industry, maintaining that she was drugged and made to perform non-consensual acts.Murphy, Kim. "Three in Traci Lords Sex Film Case Indicted", Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1987. Industry insiders, including Ron Jeremy, Tom Byron, Peter North, and Ginger Lynn said they never saw her use drugs and that she was always fully aware of her actions. While most of Lords's movies were permanently removed from distribution in the United States, several were re-edited to remove her scenes or had new footage filmed with a different actress playing her part. The only porn movie Lords appears in which is legally available in the United States is Traci, I Love You, which was filmed in Cannes, France two days after her 18th birthday.
Two Los Angeles–based producers, Ronald Kantor and Rupert McNee, as well as Jim South, were charged with filming a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The prosecution eventually failed, as all three defendants argued that because Lords having shown government-issued ID showing a birthdate in 1962 they could not have known she was underage.
Another case, United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., was brought against video store owner Rubin Gottesman, who was indicted in 1987 on charges of trafficking in child pornography by selling and distributing videos featuring Lords. Gottesman continued to distribute Lords videos well after other video wholesalers and retailers had removed those titles from their inventory, and undercover agents testified that he acknowledged knowing that Lords was under the age of 18 when she appeared in the videos. He was later convicted and incarcerated.
1987–1991: Transition to mainstream, Not of This Earth and Cry-Baby Lords enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, where she studied method acting for three months. After leaving the school, Lords placed an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter looking for representation. She was contacted by Fred Westheimer and although the agency declined to officially represent her, he decided to send her out on a few auditions. As a result, she was offered a guest role in an episode of the television series Wiseguy. Shortly afterwards, she met the director Jim Wynorski, who was directing the remake of Roger Corman's 1957 sci-fi classic Not of This Earth. He immediately cast Lords into the lead role of Nadine Story, and Not of This Earth (1988) became her first mainstream film since her departure from the adult film industry. Although the film failed at the box office, it did well in video sales. Based on that success, Lords was offered to appear in Wynorski's next film, The Haunting of Morella (1989). However, Lords turned down the offer due to the requirement of having a nude scene since she was trying to establish herself as a serious actress. She also signed with a modeling agency under her birth name Nora Kuzma and appeared on two covers of Joe Weider's magazine Muscle & Fitness. Around that time, Lords became a spokesperson for Children of the Night, an organization for runaways and abused children, and planned to release a book titled Out of the Blue: The Traci Lords Story.