"I hate the phrase 'former porn queen'. That part of my life was a long time ago. Think of something else to call me... I'm successful in spite of my past, not because of it."
Traci Lords
In the early eighties, Traci Lords was one of the most popular porn actresses in the industry thanks to a combination of her youthful looks and her enthusiastic performances. Not only had she made a name for herself as a star, but she was also beginning to set up her own production company, write and perform in her own scripts, and generally, on the outside of it, make a huge success of her chosen career path... until a Saturday morning in May 1986, when three Federal Agents burst into the bedroom of her Redondo Beach apartment in California.
Traci Lords had spent the last three years of her career working underage, starting when she was just 15 years old. And now there was a whole heap of trouble about to be brought down on the entire industry because of it.
Early Life
Traci Elizabeth Lords was born Nora Louise Kuzma on the 7th May, 1968 in Steubenville, Ohio in the United States. Her father and mother were Louis and Patricia Kuzma, and she was the second of four siblings, all girls: Lorraine, Nora, Rachel and Grace. She and her sisters grew up in the shadow of domestic abuse; her alcoholic father would return home most evenings drunk to argue with her mother. These arguments would eventually escalate into beatings, and when she was seven, her mother left her father to go live with her maternal great-grandmother, taking the girls with her. This left her and the girls at a huge financial disadvantage; however, her mother finally escaped the life of a locked-up and abused housewife, enrolling as a student at the University of Ohio, getting a job, and, more importantly, getting her life back. However, one day in 1978, her father showed up after hearing that Patricia was seeing someone else. They argued, and he punched her in the face several times; she needed over twenty stitches, and nearly lost an eye. Nora had always been scared of her father before; now she was terrified of him.
So, when she was raped later that same year, aged ten, by a sixteen-year-old boy that she'd befriended three months before, she was too scared to tell him or anyone else for fear of him blaming and hating her for what had happened. Instead she retreated into her own world of make-believe and fantasy, and began to read around the subject of sex: what it was; was it normal; what were periods and how did her body work; was sex always so violent; was she bad for being so curious about it?
Her mother struggled financially, and she eventually had to move her brood to a smaller place after she defaulted on the rent where they were living in Steubenville. When she was eleven, Nora and her sisters ended up in a one-bedroom apartment in Mingo Junction, Ohio. There, her mother met and started dating Roger Hays, a fellow student at the University of Ohio, and a hippy, who soon ended up living outside the apartment in a lime-green van; her mother too ended up living in the van, while the four girls shared the single bedroom. It was around this time that Nora began to think that her mother was... "unmotherly"... leaving her kids alone in an apartment while she was shacked up in the driveway.
Later that year, Roger and her mother piled the girls into the camper van and went on holiday to the Florida Keys. One morning, on the trip down, Nora woke up to find her tube top pulled down so that her breast were exposed, and Roger standing over her zipping up his flies. He then pulled back the curtain that separated the cab from the living area, and climbed back into the front of the camper where her mother was driving, remarking "Hee, hee, hee, look at her little poached eggs!" Her mother merely scolded him and smiled.
Roger moved to California after the trip, and two months later, Patricia and the girls followed; it was at this point that Nora's father dropped out of her life completely. They moved in with Roger into a place in Redondo Beach, and it was here that Nora started to feel settled and like she had a home for the first time in years. Roger continued to creep into her room and molest her while she slept (or pretended to sleep.) But denial's a funny thing and she usually dismissed these night time experiences come the morning as being surreal. For the most part she loved Roger as a step-father, and often took his side when he and her mother argued. Eventually they broke up and Nora and the family moved into a flat of their own.
Growing up the fast way
Nora always felt shy and uncomfortable around boys, mostly because of her earlier rape. When she was 13, she started seeing a boy a few years older than her called Dean; they first started having sex on their one year anniversary when she was 14, and she found out she was pregnant by him just after she turned 15. He dropped her like a hot potato; the only person she could think of to turn to was Roger. She chose an abortion over ending up a penniless single-mother like her own mom, and Roger helped find a clinic that would perform the abortion without her having to obtain her mother's consent. All she needed to do now was raise the cash. She tried getting a job everywhere that she could, but was turned down because of the combination of her age and her shyness. She started baby-sitting for a family friend; it was to this friend that she sobbed her heart out to the night after she'd had the abortion. The friend offered her some help with finding a job: she could use a birth certificate to obtain fake ID. The deal was that if she was caught, Nora would tell the police that she'd stolen the birth certificate.
The next day, Nora walked out of the DMV having had her photo and prints taken under the name of Kristie Elizabeth Nussman, aged 22. The ID arrived several weeks later.
The world of modelling
Now that she had her fake ID, she could apply for any job she liked. One place (among many) that she applied to was the 'World Modelling Talent Agency', run by Jim South, who were advertising for 'figure models'. Roger acted as her chauffer that day, and Jim was impressed by the girl sat before him. So impressed that he was going to make a phone call then and there... and by the way, he was going to be needing some photos. Topless shots, as it turned out. Roger and Jim helped her overcome her shyness with a glass of champagne and a line of coke. She was then told she had a modelling job lined up at 'Velvet' magazine the for the next day. 'What's that for' she asked, 'a clothing store?' 'Kinda,' came the answer.
The next day, as she arched her back and spread her legs, she caught a glimpse of Roger, her step-daddy, masturbating while he was watching her do the photo-shoot. She chose to ignore it as an alcohol-induced hallucination from the vodka she'd needed to drink to go through with what she was doing. But even then, despite this, she knew she was loving being the attention of every single adult in that room. It was all she'd ever craved and more.
Kristie Nussman was starting to become hot property; Jim South was selling her to every photographer he could, and her desire for attention overcame any doubts she'd been having about nude modelling. But all this time she was still attending high school... that is, until the day in the cafeteria that some jock plonked a magazine down in front of her showing her in all her naked glory with the caption "Pump Paula". She stood up, and walked out of her high school for the last time. The moment she'd been waiting for had arrived; her sisters and her mom would by now, because of the school gossip network, know all about her double life. She never went home again.
Traci Lords is born
One day, South presented her with a cheque for $5000, a pre-payment for a photo shoot with 'Penthouse'; she was starting to hit the big time. Up until now she'd been earning around $250 at time for a shoot. The first thing that flashed though her brain when she saw that cheque was how much coke she was going to be able to buy with it; she'd been nurturing a cocaine addiction for a while now, on top of the alcohol and cannabis (amongst other things.) By this point, she'd also dumped Roger as her adult support and moved onto Sonny, the next in what was to be a number of men that she'd use as a father substitute.
When she did the shoot for 'Penthouse', aged 16, she was told she needed a sexy stage name. She chose 'Traci', because it was a name that she'd coveted since she was a little girl. 'Lords' came from 'Hawaii Five-O' actor Jack Lord; she added the 's' because of the triple nature of her first names: Nora + Kristie + Traci. As it was, the September 1984 'Penthouse Pet' of the month was mis-spelt – 'Miss Tracy Lords' - but she didn't mind correcting it to 'Traci' when she was autographing copies.
The skin flicks
Her first porn movie was 'What Gets Me Hot'. She was only meant to be there as an extra, wondering around the pool in her bikini, but it ended up being her first on-camera sex scene. What happened, she claims, was that Tom Byron encountered her, and then seduced her, in the kitchen. She was, as was becoming the norm for her, "wasted", and was easily talked into it. She didn't know that all this was being filmed until it was nearly over, but she didn't care anyway. Sex had become a power trip for her by this point. She was beginning to realise that, not only did she love it, but also that she could use it to control those around her. 'What Gets Me Hot' was followed by 'Those Young Girls', which was followed by 'Miss Passion', which was followed by 'Lust in the Fast Lane', which was followed by....
When the FBI eventually brought her case to trial, they estimated that she'd stared in 77 porn films; her estimate is a lot lower, at 20. She explains the discrepancy by the known habit of porn directors to edit the sex scenes from one movie and slip them into a new film. She got to work with the likes of Ginger Lynn (with whom she had a rivalry, and an intense mutual dislike for), Peter North, Steve Drake, Christy Canyon, Harry Reems, John Stagliano, and Eric Edwards. It was also claimed that she was one of the highest paid actresses in the industry... but if you take into account that she says she only made twenty films and got paid $1000 a film, that's not a lot; something that the IRS got themselves in a tizzy over a bit later.
At the age of 17, she'd had enough. She wanted to quit the porn industry, find something else to do with her life. She had become disillusioned with everything that she was doing and had done, and she wanted out. She wanted to be rescued, to be saved. Her drug use was spiralling out of control and she hated her life. She dropped South as an agent and tried someone else... but as soon as they found out about her previous work she was told that they didn't deal with porn actresses and she was dropped from their books. At this point she was desperate; she was broke, and she didn't know where her next fix was coming from. Into her life steps Scott Bell (as named in her autobiography, but as she cynically notes: "Certain names have been changed to protect the guilty. My attorneys say it has to be that way. Funny how life works." It is thought Scott Bell is really Stephen Cartier.) Scott had a deal that he thought might interest Traci, and while at first she turned him down, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Scott became the next step on from Sonny. With him, she set up the 'Traci Lords Company'. She also moved into his bed; he leased her an apartment in Redondo Beach. The 'Traci Lords Company' made three films: 'Traci Takes Tokyo', filmed in Tokyo, Japan; 'Beverly Hill Copulator'; and finally, her only legal movie in the US, filmed the day after she turned 18 in Paris, France, 'Traci, I Love You'.
The FBI move in
A Saturday morning after she flew back from France, three men with FBI emblazoned on their windbreakers burst into her bedroom in Redondo where Scott and she were sleeping. Handcuffed, thrown in the back of a car, and taken to the Federal Building in downtown LA, she was led to a room with seven FBI men, including one Detective Rooker, who told her, "We know who you are, Nora. We're here to help you. But first, you're going to have to help us." Relief flooded through her. At last, a light in the darkness. Then he slotted a videotape – one of her videotapes – into a TV in the corner. As the grouped men whistled appreciatively, Traci's relief at being finally caught, perhaps rescued, turned to anger. "Fuck you people! You're not here to help me! You just want your piece!" It turned out that the Traci Lords case was three years old... they'd known about her this whole time and they could have stopped it any time they liked.
The Traci Lords case was used by the administration at the time (Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese) as a centrepiece for their anti-obscenity crusade, to shoehorn in changes to federal laws with regard to the production of pornographic material. Traci wasn't who they were after with this; they were after the entire porn industry and they were going to use Traci to get it. The porn business in the early eighties wasn't the same as it is now; while the booming sales of the video player market meant that people were now able to view smut in their homes rather than having to go to a theatre, pornography was still an underground business. People used aliases. Everything was kept hidden... apart from the naked body of course. That was always on full display. But all of a sudden, because of Traci Lords, the spotlight was shining bright on the porn kingdom with warrants and subpoenas being served left, right and centre; people were not happy. All of Traci Lords' videotapes were pulled out of circulation and destroyed for being, basically, child pornography.
To this day, there is a lot of back biting and blaming over who used who. The porn industry says that Traci Lords obtained fake ID, and set out to be a porn star. She may have been a child, but she fooled them and used them, not the other way around. There are also a lot of other claims: she was not a drug abuser; she made upward of $1 million from her work; and that she was the one her turned herself in and made their lives hell. Traci is equally clear about her side of the story: she did not set to be a porn star, her life led her there; she did not turn herself in (but she is glad that it happened because she was self-destructing); she had a large drug habit that was costing her a fortune; she made a maximum of $35,000 from her time in the industry, all of which went on drugs or rent; and that the industry used her and profited from her, both before and after her true age was discovered.
In her autobiography she points out a couple of valid hypocrisies: The news media that sought to condemn her simultaneously had edited scenes from her movies in the TV reports or shots from her modelling shoots in the newspapers; and the pornographic movie makers complaining about lost revenue from the destruction of her video tapes got richer because of all the media attention. At the end of the day, this is a situation where no one comes out looking particularly good. I personally don't think that Traci was as innocent as she makes herself out to be in her autobiography, but I also think that, at the end of the day, she was a child, and while children think they know it all, they frequently don't. She had an abusive upbringing, she was molested by her step-father, abandoned and let-down by her mother on several occasions, and sex was the only weapon she had to gain and keep attention for herself from others.
What Traci did next
What Traci did next was have a lot of therapy and a lot of drug rehabilitation. She went back to her mother and apologised for not having called for three years, and for all the things that she'd done. She got herself a very good lawyer – Leslie Abramson – who tore into the feds for the way that Traci had been treated. Was it really necessary for three men to break into her apartment and steal her away in the early hours of the morning, being that she was an unarmed, drugged-up, half-naked, 18yr old girl who weighed 94lbs? Was it appropriate that she was interviewed by seven men, the only other female present being a stenographer? Why did Traci have to go into court each time to testify that, yes, that was her on that video. Could her mother not do it for her?
Traci also decided that she wanted to be 'Traci'. She was no longer 'Nora', and never really had been 'Kristie', so while the name 'Traci Lords' had such a black mark on it, it was also her name, and she decided that she'd carry on wearing it now, like a badge of honour. It was who she was, and she wasn't going to run away from it.
Another big decision that she was facing was what to do with her one legal film – 'Traci, I love you'. There was enough of a media circus surrounding her porn career, but that was also pushing the price of this video up and up. In the end, she sold it; she needed the money more than she needed her pride.
Traci then started taking some acting lessons. Proper acting lessons. After a three month at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, she set out to find herself an agent... only that wasn't so easy. The stigma of her porn career was hanging over her like a black cloud. She got her first straight acting job, as a callgirl for an episode of the show 'Wiseguy'. The lead of the show, Ken Wahl, asked her out for dinner the night that they finished shooting. He was the first civilian that Traci had sex with, post-porn. It felt liberating.
The acting job after that was the role of Nadine Storey in the remake of 'Not of this Earth'. Filmed in ten days and edited and rolled out in four months to take advantage of the continuing Traci Lords Porn Scandal, Traci was incredibly nervous about this film, and all that it represented for her getting her life back together. The Hollywood Reporter's review of the film of the film probably made her year: "The answer is yes. She can act." Unfortunately, the film itself open and closed in theatres within days. She took this badly, and settled back into a depression; however, this was a B-movie, was always going to be a B-movie, and the only reason that they were trying it in theatres was because they were hoping that Lords' name was going to bring in the punters.
She went back and tried again. She finally got herself a full-time agent who agreed to her clause of 'clothed roles only'. For a while, she only had small parts in a number of B-movies... and then 'Cry-Baby' came along. Directed by John Waters, with Johnny Depp in the lead role, and co-starring Iggy Pop and Ricki Lake, amongst others. It was here that she met her first husband, Brook Yeaton, who was the property master on the set of 'Cry-Baby'. From then on, her rule of film making was "make every film better than the last, and keep my clothes on." Other films that she made include: 'A Time to Die'; 'The Tommyknockers'; 'Mafia Docks'; 'Serial Mom'; 'Blade'; 'Underworld' (not the one with Kate Beckinsale in); and 'Home'.
She also started moving into the world of sitcoms, and had roles in 'Married With Children', 'MacGyver', 'Tales from the Crypt', 'Melrose Place', 'Roseanne', 'Profiler', and 'First Wave'. She recorded her own album in 1995 – '1000 Fires' – a very techno / jungle beat based sound. One of the tracks, 'Father's Field', is a cathartic release of the memory of her rape as a young girl. At the time she didn't know if maybe she was revealing a little too much of herself to be putting the words that she wrote in her diary to music, but it worked, and she kept it.
Unfortunately, her marriage to Brook couldn't survive the pressure and strain of both of them wanting a career, and they divorced in 1994. She went out with John Enos for a year, but relationship also failed to last the distance; this might have had something to do with his two pit bulls savagely attacking and killing her pet Persian cat. Then in 2001, she started dating and fell completely head over heels for Jeff Lee. They married in 2002, and still seem to be very happy in 2006.
Traci Lords: Underneath It All
Traci released her autobiography in 2003; a cathartic experience for her, and part of the on-going therapy that she's put herself through to excise the demons of her childhood. She also wrote it because she was sick of the number of articles out there containing half-truths, rumours, and out-right lies about her, and she wanted to give her side of the story. She's never going to set the world on fire with her writing (she uses the 'peeling of the onion' analogy three times; count that, three times. Jesus wept.) but what she lacks in talent she makes up for in honest emotion. How much of her side of the story is glossed over or painted to make her look good or bad, who knows. For instance, there was no mention of her second marriage to Ryan Riel Grainger. But one thing you take away from it is just how driven this woman has been to succeed in life. She has gone at it full pelt, left the ghosts of her past behind her, and you have got to respect her for that. As for the porn business, she has this to say:
Today porn is everywhere I look. I find it in the junk mail folder on my computer, it peers at me from local magazine racks, and sits blatantly in the window of the liquor store where I buy my wine. Porn stars play themselves on television shows, appear on billboards, and give interviews about how "liberating" porn is for women. Well, I believe it's anything but. It annoys me that I can't block out these unwanted intrusions in my life. I find the junk mail insulting, the box covers inappropriate (in a public place), and the women who claim porn is liberating, irresponsible.
Other women who have acted in pornographic movies whilst under age include Alexandra Quinn, Tabatha Cash, Rene Summers, Kristara Barrington, Ali Moore, Nikki Charm, and Christiana.
Children of the Night
Traci is involved with the charity, 'Children of the Night'. Founded in 1979, their aim is to rescue children in the US aged between 11 and 17 from the grip of prostitution. They rely on private donations to keep running, but they are making a difference. It is to these people that she dedicates her autobiography. Visit their website here.
Filmography
A full list of porn filmography can be found here at the Internet Adult Film Database, and a full list of all her work since then, including both film, sitcom, and television appearances can be found here on the IMDb.