Traci Lords

Traci Lords (born Nora Louise Kuzma; May 7, 1968) is an American actress, singer, and former pornographic actress.

She entered the adult film industry using a fake birth certificate to conceal that she was two years under the legal age of 18.

Lords starred in adult films and was one of the most sought-after actresses in that industry during her career.

When the FBI acted on an anonymous tip that Lords was a minor during her time in the industry, and that pornographers were distributing and selling these illegal images and videotapes, the resulting fallout led to prosecution of those responsible for creating and distributing the tapes.

In addition, all but the last of her adult films were banned as child pornography.

After leaving the pornography industry two days after turning the legal age of eighteen, Lords enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, where she studied method acting with the intention of becoming a mainstream actress.

Lords was born Nora Louise Kuzma on May 7, 1968, in Steubenville, Ohio, to Louis and Patricia Kuzma.

Her father's parents were of Ukrainian descent, while her mother was of Irish ancestry.

Louis was employed as a steelworker.

Kuzma has one elder sister, Lorraine, and two younger sisters, Rachel and Grace.

Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and Kuzma 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 Ohio University and became employed part-time.

When Kuzma was 12, she moved with her mother, her mother's new boyfriend, and sisters 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, Kuzma developed a rebellious attitude.

She was angry at her mother and found a father figure in her mother's boyfriend Roger Hayes, as she calls him in her autobiography.

He was a drug abuser and molested Kuzma in her sleep.

According to Lords, this and a rape by a 16-year-old boy in school she had been seeing, which she called "the single most traumatizing thing that ever happened to me in my life", would be what eventually drove her into pornography.

Lords has stated, "My damage drove me into porn. I mean, I was a little girl. And I had like all of this stuff. I'd been raped. I'd been molested. I'd been abused. I was messed up. And I was angry. And the same thing that later helped me to change my life when I was 18 and out of that world that helped me to get sober and helped me to gather the courage to go and do the work I needed to do, to look at some things in my life that were so ugly."

After her mother broke up with Hayes due to his drug use, she began dating his friend.

Kuzma refused to follow them to a new place and was left with her older sister Lorraine.

Her mother and two younger sisters eventually found a new apartment.

At age 15, Kuzma became pregnant by her high school boyfriend.

Afraid of her mother's reaction, she went to Hayes for help.

He arranged for her to have an abortion without her mother's knowledge.

Looking for a job to get some money, she was introduced to Hayes' friend and started working for her as a babysitter.

The woman offered to improve Kuzma's job opportunities by helping her get a fake driver's license.

She provided Kuzma with a new birth certificate on condition that if she were ever caught she would say that she had stolen the phony identification.

Kuzma now had the alias Kristie Elizabeth Nussman and a new driver's license that stated she was 20 rather than 15 years old.

She made her mainstream screen debut at age nineteen in a leading role in the 1988 remake of the 1957 Roger Corman science fiction film Not of This Earth.

Lords followed with the role of Wanda Woodward in John Waters' teen comedy, Cry-Baby (1990).

Her other acting credits included the television series MacGyver, Married... with Children, Tales from the Crypt, Roseanne, Melrose Place, Profiler, First Wave, Highlander: The Series, Gilmore Girls, and Will & Grace.

After her song "Love Never Dies" was featured on the soundtrack to the film Pet Sematary Two (1992), she was signed to Radioactive Records and subsequently released her debut studio album, 1000 Fires (1995) to generally positive reviews.

Despite the poor sales of the album, the lead single "Control" had moderate commercial success.

She also appeared in films such as Skinner (1993), Virtuosity (1995), Blade (1998), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and Excision (2012), which earned her a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as a Fright Meter Award and a CinEuphoria Award.

Lords also pursued music in addition to her film career.

It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart and was included on the soundtrack to the film Mortal Kombat (1995), which was eventually certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

In 2003, Lords published her autobiography, Traci Lords: Underneath It All, which received positive reviews from critics and debuted at number 31 on The New York Times Best Seller list.