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Early lifeNora Louise Kuzma was born in Steubenville, Ohio to Louis and Patricia Kuzma (neé Briceland). Her stage name is said to be in tribute to Katharine Hepburn's character Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story[2] or from the first name of her high school best friend Traci; and the last name of her favorite actor from Hawaii Five-O, Jack Lord. At twelve she fled from her abusive, alcoholic father to Lawndale, California, with her mother and three sisters.[3] In 1983 she began Redondo Union High School, and she had an abortion which she paid for by herself. She also had a nervous breakdown and ran away from home. While living with her mother's ex-boyfriend, who posed as her stepfather, she used a friend's birth certificate to obtain a driver's license indicating that she was twenty-two years of age to fake her way into the porn industry at the age of fifteen, starting with Jim South at the World Modeling Agency in Sherman Oaks, while assuming the name Kristie Elizabeth Nussman.[3]
In 1986, authorities discovered she was underage while making movies and they arrested her, as well as the owners of her movie agency and X-citement Video, Inc. See United States v. X-Citement Video. The ensuing prosecution against the agencies cost the pornographic film and distribution industry millions of dollars as they were obliged by law to remove hundreds of thousands of her videotapes, films and magazines from store shelves to avoid the risk of prosecution for trafficking child pornography. In her book, Lords suggested hypocrisy on the part of the movie producers and the news media, arguing that the porn industry got richer from the scandal's publicity even as they complained of losing a lot of money after destroying her illegal movies. She complained that the reporters that condemned her in their news stories used censored pictures from her films in their reports. [4] Lords herself was never charged with a crime, since as a minor she was unable to give informed consent to perform sex acts on film for money. Instead, the agents and producers who accepted her fake IDs were charged and people affiliated with the films in question experienced legal troubles for years. For her appearance in these movies, while she was under-age she was paid a salary, she didn't own the rights of those films. According to her autobiography, she made $35,000 as total salary for all of those movies, including the $5,000 she received for her appearance in Penthouse. Most of this money was spent on rent and drugs. It also paid for a black Corvette that her boyfriend later totaled. But for her last few films she and another much older boyfriend,Stewart Dell, formed the Traci Lords Company where her boyfriend produced the movies. Lord received a smaller salary but received also part of the rights of these movies. Only one of these films, Traci, I Love You, was produced after her eighteenth birthday. Later, after her arrest Lords sold her rights in this film for $100,000. It is the only one legally available in the United States.
Government prosecutors declared that Lords was a victim of a manipulative industry, maintaining she was drugged and made to do non-consensual acts. But industry insiders, like Ron Jeremy, Ginger Lynn and Tom Byron, as well as boyfriends say they never saw her use drugs and that she was fully aware of her actions even if, as a minor, she could not legally consent. While Lords decries the pornographic film industry, she continues to use the stage name she gave herself as a minor, and ultimately made it her legal name. She wrote, "I chose to stop running from it. Instead, I won it, legally changing my name to Traci Elizabeth Lords. That's who I was, and that's who I was going to be."[4] Lords stated that she is not trying to hide from her past,telling Oprah: "I found you can run but you cannot hide". [5] The Justice Department was forced to drop all charges when it was revealed that the fake ID which Lords had used to dupe the pornographic film industry was a U.S. passport in the name of Traci Lords - the government had been duped, and any defendant would simply have been able to hide behind the government's error. A new beginningLeaving her porn past behind her, Lords moved into mainstream films. She has played roles in a number of B-movies. At 18, Lords began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and soon after, starred in a remake of Roger Corman's cult favorite Not of This Earth. Then in 1990, she was added to the cast that included Johnny Depp, Ricki Lake, and even Iggy Pop, in John Waters' Cry Baby, playing the role of Wanda Woodward. Other movies on her resume include Blade, Extramarital, Black Mask 2: City of Masks, and Chump Change, the latter of which won her a Best Actress Award at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. In addition to movies, Lords has also made many appearances in various TV shows, including Married... with Children, MacGyver, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt, Hercules, Gilmore Girls, and Will & Grace among others, along with recurring roles in Profiler, Roseanne, and Melrose Place. From late in 2000 to 2001, Traci Lords appeared in the Francis Ford Coppola produced sci-fi series First Wave, playing "Jordan Radcliffe", the newest member of a group called Raven Nation that combats extraterrestrial aliens. In the 1990s, Lords began developing a career as a singer, performing vocals for Manic Street Preachers on the single "Little Baby Nothing", and also appearing in the music videos of other performers and groups. In 1995, Lords made her solo debut, in collaboration with Juno Reactor and Jesus Jones' Mike Edwards, called 1000 Fires. The album was a hit with critics and club audiences.[citation needed] The Juno Reactor-produced first single "Control" proved a smash, reaching a peak of #2 on the Billboard Dance Charts. The song "Control" was featured in the 1995 movie adaptation of the game "Mortal Kombat", which played as an instrumental. "Fallen Angel", the second single off the album, earned a lot of attention because one of its remixes ("Honeymoon Stitch Mix") was produced and remixed by Chad Smith and Dave Navarro. The video for "Fallen Angel" was directed by Stéphane Sednaoui, who also directed such high-profile videos as the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Give It Away", and Madonna's "Fever". After a couple of years of musical silence, Lords returned to the music scene in 2004 with a new, independently-produced recording, the double A-side "Sunshine". In 2003 she published her autobiography, Traci Lords: Underneath It All (ISBN 0-06-050820-5), which made the New York Times bestseller list. In December, 2003, Traci wrote and directed a short film with Fox Searchlab entitled Sweet Pea, released and shown at film festivals in 2005. The film is loosely inspired by an experience recounted in her autobiography; a teenage girl finds herself overcome with doubt after being raped by her boyfriend. Acting creditsFilm
Television
Video games
Music
Notable adult videos
Tributes
Citations
See also
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