Traci Lords

Nora Louise Kuzma was born on 7 May 1968 in the small industrial town of Steubenville in Eastern Ohio. She was the second of four daughters born to Louis Kuzma, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, and Patricia. Nora's parents split when she was seven, mainly as a result of her father's drinking problem and physical abuse towards his wife. Patricia took the four girls with her when she moved out and spent the next four years struggling to pay the rent and provide for the children.

By the age of ten, Nora had started to develop physically and notice boys for the first time. She developed a crush on a sixteen-year-old boy named Ricky, with whom she would spend her afternoons after school. One day while lying next to him in a field "he told me I was beautiful as he started unbuttoning my blouse. I was in a trance, but I blocked his fingers and told him to stop… I wanted to go home. I tried to get up and he pushed me back down. Alarms were going off in my head. I was scared and I told him so, but he kept taking my clothes off… When he entered me, I screamed until I couldn't scream anymore, but he wouldn't stop. When it was over, he left me lying there all alone, bloody and naked." Nora was too ashamed and confused to tell anybody about the rape and didn't have sex again for three years.

Patricia eventually met a man named Robert, and in 1979 moved with the girls to California in order to be with him. Robert took on the role of stepfather and attempted to provide for the girls, but he also developed a keen interest in Nora. "Robert was coming into my room at night… I still didn't know why he was there… One night… I'd almost fallen asleep when, in my groggy state, I saw Robert's face hovering above me. At first I thought I was dreaming, but when I sat up, I could feel his fingers inside me."

Although unaware of Robert's interest in her daughter, Patricia's relationship with him soon deteriorated as his drug intake increased. Nora spent the next couple of years drifting between Robert, whom she still considered her stepfather, and her mother's constantly changing abode. When she was thirteen she met and fell in love with a seventeen-year-old boy named Dean. Because of the trauma of her rape she refused to have sex, and it was only a year later that she finally gave in to him. "The first time was on our one-year anniversary… We had sex that afternoon and it wasn't nearly as awful as the first time. I was drunk enough to feel brave. He was gentle and it didn't go on for very long. Afterward, I wondered why I had made such a big deal out of it. It only hurt the first few times, and I wasn't worried about birth control because we had made a deal that he'd always pull out… I found out I was pregnant just after my fifteenth birthday." Dean immediately abandoned Nora, and it was Robert that helped her get an abortion.

Nora decided to get a job in order to support herself, but found it impossible due to her age. A friend of Robert's helped her get a fake driving license, and in 1983, still only 15 years old, she became 22 year-old Kristie Elizabeth Nussman. One of the first jobs she applied for was with a modelling agency, and her stepfather offered to drive her to the interview. "Robert wanted to know what kind of modelling it was. I told him it was called 'figure modelling', and that I'd have to model bathing suits and stuff like that. He looked at me strangely, then just smiled, never informing me that I had naively answered an ad for nude models. Looking back on that day, I realise he knew exactly what was going on."

The agent in question was Jim South. In her autobiography she later recalled the meeting: "Excusing himself briefly, he came back with a bottle of champagne. He poured us a glass, raised his, looked right at me, and said, 'Forgive my manners, miss. My name is Jim South and I'm gonna make you a star. Sir, your daughter is a looker.'" According to South: “Kristie Nussman came in with a guy, his name was something like Rogers. She actually had a state ID with her picture on it, and a matching birth certificate. So I sent Kristie into the little photo studio and told her – like we do with everyone – ‘Please strip your clothes. I’m going to take a couple of Polaroids’. We get them started like that. I went back into my office. This Rogers guy, who claimed to be Kristie’s stepfather, was going on and on about how Kristie knew who Ron Jeremy was. He was sure, in almost no time, that Kristie would be doing X-rated movies.”

According to Nora: "When they left, I snorted a line of white powder South called 'coke' from a mirror he'd left in the little dressing area. I'd never snorted coke before and it gave me a weird, jittery burst of energy… Shyly, I stepped out of my pale pink dress. I was naked in white panties and high heels when Robert and South walked in. They both looked approvingly at my breasts. Robert stood in the corner and Jim positioned me against a wall. 'Arch your back and place your hand on your rear end,' he said. 'Close your eyes halfway and make a kiss with your mouth.' He took half a dozen photos and then I got dressed. On our way out he asked for my ID, saying he needed a copy for his records."

The next day Nora was booked for her first professional photo-shoot. "Robert was waiting… with a stack of magazines he'd bought, like Vogue, Teen, Playboy, and some foreign nude ones… He told me I needed to memorise all the different poses, be cooperative with the photographer, and most of all act like a professional." When she got to the studio "I changed into a blue pleated skirt and a tight sweater… A pair of white bobby socks and really high heels completed the look… As I lay on the bed, the photographer showed me where he wanted my rear end. Then he asked me to really arch my back as I bent forward. Cupping my naked breasts, I slid my panties off… I spread my legs and caressed my breasts. Through a dreamy fog, I spotted Robert sitting in the corner of the studio, his hand buried beneath his coat, watching me." In her autobiography Nora describes the shoot as if she were merely going through the motions. Others such as South, however, recall things differently. “The first or second shoot she did was for a guy named Lance Kincaid. And according to Lance, who only shot single-girl or simulation, where you’re just touching, Traci ended up getting on top of someone and having sex, so he had to stop the shoot.”

She decided to adopt the pseudonym Traci Lords. In her autobiography she said: “I chose Traci, one of the ‘popular’ names I’d longed for growing up. During a re-run of the series Hawaii Five-O later that evening, I took actor Jack Lord’s surname.” Tracy Lords, however, is also the name of Grace Kelly’s character in High Society. In a 1986 interview she would even claim, “I love my name very much… it’s always been Traci with an ‘I’. On my birth certificate, it says ‘Traci’… [My parents] just like it like that.”

The success of this first shoot led to more work. "I was fifteen years old when I was hired to model for Penthouse magazine… From then on I was known in the sex industry as Traci Lords… The combination of little girl gone bad had photographers fighting to shoot me. It was a total ego trip… Any doubts I had about posing nude were overruled by my insatiable desire for attention. For five weeks I led a double life. I was high school sophomore Nora Kuzma by day and nude centrefold by night… I started wearing the slutty outfits I posed in for school… I was playing a dangerous game."

It was only a matter of time before this double life caught up with her though, and one day when she was in the school cafeteria someone dropped a magazine on the table next to her. "On the cover, there was a young girl in a pleated skirt with her hands over her breasts. The caption read 'Pump Paula'… It was me, spread-eagle in a really sleazy skin magazine… I ran out of the cafeteria and off campus, never to return to school again."

Nevertheless, the next day she turned up for another job. "The shoot was for a book on couples and sex. I was there to do the photo illustrations… I was outfitted in a beautiful white lace teddy with stockings and garters, and my 'husband' had on red silk boxer shorts… We spent the entire afternoon being photographed in a series of simulated sex acts. I got a real education that day. I had no idea so many positions existed…I found myself completely turned on and hoped to God no one could tell."

By this point her stepfather had vanished from the scene and she was living with a guy named Tommy. According to Traci, they spent all her money of alcohol and coke. "I stood stupidly by as this 22 year-old speed freak spent my money, slapped me around, and sadly made me feel right at home." Traci later claimed that the next two-and-a-half years were a drug and alcohol fuelled haze. Those in porn who knew her laugh at this assertion. Jim South insists, "That's an absolute lie. I never saw the girl take drugs. I would've had complaints. She was always a responsible businesswoman."

"As the weeks passed South continued to turn up the heat, pushing me to do hard-core stills and porn movies, and warning me that if I didn't I'd be out of work… he told me I was all 'shot-up' in the centrefold world. If I didn't believe him, he said, I should look for myself. I did, and found he was right… I'd posed for every magazine on the rack by now, and the business was all about new meat."

In September 1984 she became Penthouse Pet of the Month and went out to celebrate with Tommy. "The bar was hopping with both men and women, and I was suddenly the main attraction… I was cocky and arrogant. Becoming the life of the party, I danced with Tommy extra sexy, showing off and lifting my skirt… I was completely aware of the jealous looks from the women and lust from the men…That became the best selling issue in the history of Penthouse… It was October 1984 when I graduated to doing porn films."

Traci later recalled appearing on a porn set for the first time; it was Richard Mailer’s ‘What Gets Me Hot’ (1984). Mailer later admitted that he hadn‘t needed her, but “Traci was so beautiful I just had to have her in the picture.” According to Traci, "These people were just having a good time, partying and hanging out." Despite the relaxed atmosphere though, she claims she was unable to go through with her scene. "I found my director behind a camera watching a woman having sex with two guys. Blushing, I gawked at them. I had never seen anyone have sex before, and it was so aggressive, so primal the way this woman moaned that it scared the crap out of me… I turned and ran down the hall to the front door." She was eventually persuaded to try again, and her first scene simply entailed walking through an orgy in just a skimpy bikini. In her autobiography she remembers retiring to the kitchen afterwards. "The image of all those breasts and asses, arms and legs wrapped around each other was fresh in my mind. It was a bizarre tangle of flesh, which I found erotic. The people had become a sea of groping, moaning bodies and I was amazed at the very matter-of-fact way the women acted. They stripped without any hesitation whatsoever and spread their legs without any hint of shame.”

In a 1986 interview Traci claimed: “I was dating Tom Byron. He was in the same film. And we were sorta making out in the kitchen and the next thing I knew, they were shooting it. One thing led to another and I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell?’ They just started shooting it and, well, I just kept going. I could have stopped whenever I wanted to but I just kept going. It was a turn-on, yeah. Everyone was talking about me. I was the centre of attention. I love attention.”

In her autobiography, years later, she presents matters differently. “Tom Byron walked in and started flirting with me… he had this sweet, dopey puppy-dog thing going on and I let my guard down. I was wasted by that point, and since then I've often wondered if he'd been sent into the kitchen to seduce me or if he just got lucky. I'm still not sure why I let him have his way with me… All I can say is I never intended to be filmed having sex in that kitchen, and I only realised I was being filmed when it was nearly over and I had already given in to a feeling I had never known during sex - power. And with that power came pleasure."

Tom Byron, on the other hand, has his own recollections of that day: “I met Traci on the set of ‘What Gets Me Hot’. Traci had a non-sex role – just a masturbation thing. In those days, you went from figure model to soft-core stills model to movies. It was a gradual progression… I was the new kid on the block – kind of up-and-comer – and I looked at her and said, ‘Oh my God! This girl is gorgeous!’ Traci comes up to me and says, ‘Oh hi. Who are you?’ And before I know it she’s sitting in my lap, and we’re fucking kissing, and it just blew my mind because I got this beautiful goddess all over me.”

For Traci pornography was all about power. "That's what porn did for me. It allowed me to release all the fury I'd felt my entire life. And that's what got me off… I'd finally found a place to put my energies - I was vengeful even savage, in sex scenes, fully unleashing my wrath. At the ripe old age of sweet sixteen, I was nothing short of a sexual terrorist. Porn was a power trip for me… I was a sex-crazed, drugged out wild-child and I wreaked havoc on everyone I came across."

She soon became renowned in the industry for her sexual appetite. Humphrey Knife, husband of photographer Suze Randall remembered when “Suze took Traci down to Mexico for a shoot, and, oh boy, she fucked her way around. It was, you know, anyone and everybody in the house, all night, and she’d be fresh as a daisy the next day. Phenomenal sexual appetite. A very passionate girl. And fun, a load of fun… Did Traci enjoy sex? Undoubtedly. Not just having sex on-screen because there’s a certain amount of fakery that goes on with that, but off-screen – you know, assistants, realtors, just about everybody.”

Legendary director Greg Dark had similar memories of her. “Traci comes over to me on the shoot with this new guy, Dick Rambone, who has fifteen and a half inches, who was having trouble getting it up… Traci says, ‘His dick, I wonder how big it can get? I bet you I can make it get up’… Then Traci jumped on this guy and started sucking his weenie for, like the next three hours. Meanwhile her pussy’s getting sopping wet – we didn’t even have to spray water on it for realism. It was all I could do not to dive in between her legs and do her. It was rough. I got a headache from the whole thing.”

Even established actors such as Paul Thomas were taken aback by Traci’s attitude: "She was one of the few actresses who wouldn't stop having sex after the camera was off. She wanted to show she could fuck just as good as porn stars like me. I met her on the set of 'Sex Fifth Avenue' in 1986. She was as cute as can be. A nasty little girl who enjoyed being bad! I just wanted to fuck her." Bill Margold also remembered this side of her on set. "When the camera went off, Traci was still fucking Jamie [Gillis], while screaming 'Come on, mama wants it hotter!' She had the sexual precociousness of a 40-year old." According to fellow actress Christy Canyon: “Traci Lords knew more about sex than the whole porn industry put together.”

Jerry Butler, however, remembers her differently. "The first time I saw Traci Lords was in Penthouse, and I jerked off to her incessantly. I'd never seen a prettier pinup, but in real life Traci was another cup of tea. When I met her, I wasn't too impressed. Traci was hyped so well because she had the innocent girl-next-door quality that porno companies loved. You know, the girl most likely not to do it! Porky and lazy, her balloon tits didn't do much for me. Then she started to make these orgasmic sounds – before I even pulled down my zipper. It was like fucking a voice-over… She's a sexual billboard. Billboards look expensive and expansive. They demonstrate, but they never move or feel… Traci mastered that clichéd sexy look for the camera."

As Traci Lords' fame grew, so did her ego. In 1984 she starred in one of her better movies, 'Those Young Girls', and signed a copy of the movie poster for a female porn executive. She scribbled all over Harry Reems' photo and wrote 'Asshole'. On John Holmes she wrote 'Dick' and on Ginger Lynn 'Bitch No Tits' and 'I don't do niggers or anal'. Traci signed the poster 'Traci Lords #1 Star'.

Despite working with Ginger Lynn in a number of movies, Traci's ego meant they were never remotely close. In her autobiography she claims that during the making of 'Talk Dirty To Me 3' (1984) "I was pissed off and disgusted by the thought of the upcoming lesbian scene I was supposed to have with this bitch on wheels. The thought of kissing her grossed me out… She'd given me attitude from the moment I'd met her a few months earlier, clearly seeing me as competition. And she was right."

This animosity appears to have been mutual. According to Christy Canyon: “Traci and Ginger hated each other.” Ginger Lynn: “I remember meeting Traci [for the first time] in the parking lot of the grocery store across from Jim South’s office. I thought she was a hooker… Back then it was such a small industry that we were all pretty tight – everybody hung out with everybody. But Traci was never in the group… I worked with Traci in five or six scenes, and the scenes were wonderful because my dislike for her was so extreme that on camera it came across as chemistry… Traci made me nervous. She could be extremely cruel. I didn’t find her attractive. I instinctually had a bad feeling about her.” In a 2000 interview Ginger curtly stated "Traci Lords and I were never friends and we never will be". In 2003 she called Traci a 'dog' and described her autobiography as “bullshit”, announcing: "Traci Lords should be ashamed of herself. If there's an ounce of truth in her book, it'll be a miracle."

At the time Tom Byron appeared to be one of her closest friends in the industry. He recalled in a 2001 interview: "We kind of hung out a little bit… On her supposed twenty third birthday, I had given her twenty two white roses and one red rose, but not only was it not her real birthday, it wasn't even close to her real age… I was more or less in puppy love with her. Infatuated because she was gorgeous and it was weird that someone that gorgeous was also attracted to me. That was very new to me at the time. It was more puppy love than anything… We always used to make fun of the naive young girls. She always seemed to have her shit together. I admired her intelligence and her ambition." Even when Traci's relationship with her boyfriend Tommy began to disintegrate, it was Byron she confided in. "There was a point, when we were doing 'Sister Dearest' (1985) when she said 'I have to get away from this guy. He's spending all my money and he treats me like shit.' I told her to just get away from him, live with me for a while or whatever." Yet in her attempt to re-write her years as a porn star she dismisses him in her autobiography by saying: "Dicks for hire like Tom Byron bragged about how we were off-screen lovers."

Traci would later say: “At that age, you don’t really understand what you’re doing. You don’t really understand the consequences.“ She claimed that producers kept her high on drugs and alcohol. That she was a victim unable to escape. Others, however, remember her not only as calculating but also a sexual predator. According to Robin Gottesman, owner of X-citement Video Inc: “I got to meet her, and I took her to Texas, and we became good friends… Traci was on drugs, but she knew what she was doing. Absolutely.” Tom Byron: “we did drugs together, but she was always on the set on time, you know? She was very professional and always knew her lines… She was a consummate professional, which is why she was paid as well as she was and worked as often as she did.” Jim South: “She’ll know all her lines and everyone else’s too. She’ll hit her marks perfectly every time. And when you’re done with the dialogue, she’ll fuck like a mink in heat!“ Ginger Lynn: “On ‘The Grafenburg Spot’ we had a motor home that would take us from location to location, and Traci fucked the entire crew in between filming. And I never once – and back in those days I did drugs – saw her do a drug. I never saw her doing anything that she was forced into doing. She seemed to enjoy herself.”

In April 2004 Diane Frank interviewed Suze Randall for the television show 'A&E Biography'. According to Suze, Traci was "the best model I've ever worked with. Although I didn't know she was underage, she was a close friend at the time. She's the only model that I've ever done a sunrise shoot with. I found her making love on the beach at dawn, so I grabbed my camera and did a layout on her. I could never get anyone to get up that early to shoot, and she had just not slept! She was a hot one! No wonder she had the whole industry fooled! She was so sexually aggressive and provocative. I've never met anyone like her." After the interview Frank commented, Suze is "a radical person, but she's not radical on this issue. She was able to see Traci as a person… She sees Traci probably as Traci doesn't want to see her, of course, Traci claims she doesn't know what was going on, but Suze sees Traci as knowing precisely what was going on."

Margold is even more blunt: "She was exceptionally mechanical. Like a cash register. She never gave too much on screen." According to Eric Louzil, who directed her second mainstream movie, ‘Shock ‘Em Dead’ (1991), “Traci was fun. She was a cute girl… She was a smart businesswoman.” Adult director David Jennings also described her as “the most competent, mature and sophisticated 22-year-old I’d ever met“ (she was actually 16!) Debi Diamond was just starting out in the industry at the time and remembers Traci quite vividly. "Let me tell you, someone like her, who fucked on films, who obviously loved it! She raped me in the fuckin' bathroom, and it wasn't even on a set for the show!" While preparing to film ‘Physical 2’ (1985), Tom Byron actually warned the director, “If she’s still horny after a scene is finished, she might grab a crew guy, and slam him on his back and start in on him.”

Even Traci admits candidly to this side of her past, recalling in her autobiography an incident in the swimming pool at the house where 'Talk Dirty To Me 3' was being filmed. "I could see a gorgeous man standing waist-deep in front of me. He smiled watching a naked goddess with long dark hair floating on her back, her small, perfect nipples pointing towards the heavens. I made my way towards her, and felt his hand glide across my back… She wasn't a porn star… None of these naked midnight swimmers did it on film. They were extras from some 'real' modelling agency… My naked body met the flesh of the swimming creature, and I startled her by running a finger across her belly… She smiled and splashed water at me… she pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me… She kissed me softly and I kissed her back… I bit into her lip, kissing her harder. I lost myself in the moment… I felt hands on my hips as someone slowly entered me from behind. I lost my breath, a sharp gasp escaping as he sank deeper into me. I was pretty sure it was the gorgeous man who had stroked my back… Moments later I was abruptly pulled from the water by a production assistant… I was wanted on the set."

According to Traci things came to a head when she hit the strip circuit. "Two months before my seventeenth birthday, I took the stripping gig in San Francisco… But instead of feeling powerful and in control, I felt like a beaten little girl… two shots later, I took to the stage… It was a sell-out crowd and I gave the bald businessmen what they wanted, wiggling in their laps and stripping naked as the tips came in. I thrust my breasts in their faces, sold my panties to a guy in the audience, and then strutted off stage."

A few days after the show she sacked Jim South as her agent and went freelance. The first thing she made was the incredibly boring Japanese financed bondage movie 'Pony Girls' (1985). "In the middle of the field was what looked like a large circular clothesline attached to a six-foot metal pole stuck in the ground. Hanging down from four equally spaced positions on the line were black leather leashes, and attached to those leashes were women. Three spots were taken and only one was unoccupied. That's my spot! I realised with horror! I stood gaping at these 'pony women' trotting around in circles. It was a bizarre spectacle. They wore tall black leather boots, black studded leather g-strings, and black bras with the nipple area cut out. One had a horse gag in her mouth. A hooded man, well over six feet tall, stood in the centre of the ring, whipping their muscular asses and ordering them to 'mush mush' as they trotted by… I felt like I'd fallen into the twilight zone!"

By this point her career had gone into freefall as the market was saturated by badly made movies with recycled Traci Lords scenes. She eventually decided to quit the industry altogether and left her boyfriend Tommy. Her hiatus didn't last long though as she hooked up with a man Jim South would later refer to as a 'snake'. With him she set up her own company. "It would be called TLC, the Traci Lords Company. It would produce three X-rated films starring me. I would be required to perform three sex scenes per film… Once again my life became a blur of sex and drugs." Traci later claimed that her new manager "quickly took on the role of business partner, boyfriend, and pimp to the porn industry." And yet she was now completely independent of the industry and in control of her own career. She raised her own money, produced her own films, wrote her own scripts, starred in her own projects and marketed the resulting product.

She also later claimed: "My drug intake was at an all-time high, my weight had dropped to ninety-pounds, and my five-foot-seven inch frame looked more frail than ever." Yet again, watching the first two films produced by TLC, 'Beverly Hills Copulator' (1986) and 'Traci Takes Tokyo' (1986), she looks sexier, healthier and more vivacious than ever before. Her drive was also at an all-time high, as according to the film crews she would egg on her male co-stars by snarling: "Come on baby! Is that all you've got?" One day after her 18th birthday she began filming 'Traci, I Love You' with French porn legend Marilyn Jess, in Paris. According to Marilyn, and contrary to what Traci would say in later years, “I think that she [Traci] really came. I could swear it. Traci really enjoyed sex when she was in front of the camera. She is an incredible exhibitionist! With me, she came, I’m sure. Between spasms liquid was flowing from her pussy. It was delicious!” It was to be her third and final film for TLC.

Not long after she returned from Paris, the FBI arrested Traci and the story broke that she had in fact been underage while making porn films. Theories then began to circulate as to who had informed the authorities, but the truth was never established. According to Traci "I was part of a sting operation that had something to do with a man named Meese… they'd been gathering information on me for a while. The Traci Lords case was three years old." "I'm really glad they did what they did… ultimately, they saved my life so I'm really glad that that happened because I have no doubt in my mind that I would have ultimately ended up OD'd dead someplace and I would have been another statistic." Margold has his own theory, and believes that Traci informed the authorities herself. She co-owned TLC and had exclusive rights to 'Traci, I Love You', the only legal Traci Lords movie now in existence. According to Gottesman: “They’ve sold a hundred thousand copies. I know for an exact fact that she got ten bucks for every copy that was sold in royalties.” She then sold the rights to the movie for $100,000. Traci dismisses this argument in her autobiography by saying "it hadn't occurred to me that the countless news reports about me and the sex scandal would give it added value." She also claims "I'd made about $35,000 during my three years in the porn business, and all that money was now gone, spent on rent and drugs." As for the money from her final movie, according to Traci it was all spent on legal costs.

Of course there are counter-arguments. People in the porn industry believe she made hundreds of thousands of dollars during her career, and can't understand what legal fees she had to pay when she was never charged with anything. The end result was that all her underage movies and photographs were made illegal in the USA and destroyed. This cost the industry a fortune! Jim South and Rubin Gottesman were charged with violating federal child pornography laws and spent a further $100,000 to defend themselves. South was acquitted, but Gottesman spent a year in jail. According to Ron Jeremy "She also helped prosecute Ginger Lynn, Tom Byron and Harry Reems on taxes since she was wanted on tax evasion. Traci Lords turned in her friends so they didn't go after her."

Since her exit from porn she has made a career in mainstream television and the odd-movie. Many former colleagues are still bitter and cynical though. Occasional porn actor and director Bud Lee remarked: “I haven’t figured out Traci Lords yet. She has very little talent, takes roles that usually portray her as a whore or overtly sexual, then she spurns the adult business. Without which, I am fairly certain she would not be where she is today.” In 1999 Ginger Lynn said in an interview: "No one's going to hire an actress that can't act. Well, I shouldn't say that, Traci Lords works a lot!" Tom Byron is more withdrawn: "Pretty Girl. She wouldn't have the career she has without the notoriety she got from us, so for her to downgrade the industry isn't right. At the same time, I understand it because the world is not ready to accept and unrepentant porn star."

Traci Lords still portrays herself as a victim and a survivor claiming: "I started climbing out of the hell I'd been sentenced to years before at the hands of perverts and paedophiles." The fact is, however, that although some in the industry suspected she was younger than she claimed, no one realised she was underage. Traci believes that despite her false ID, "I looked like a kid". But she didn't look fifteen! She had entered adult films voluntarily and fooled everyone. The people she worked for in the porn industry may have been a lot of things, but they were not paedophiles. They were interested in making money, and in an industry struggling to remain above the law, employing an underage girl to have sex in front of the camera and then claiming she was 22 did not make sense! As Ron Jeremy said in a 2003 interview, "Why go to jail? There's plenty of gorgeous girls who are over 18."

Although 'Traci, I Love You' is her only legal release in the USA, in Europe the age of consent is much lower. All her old porn movies can still be legally bought in sex shops, and in fact have recently been re-released on DVD by a French company. Although hard to find, her hardcore and soft-core photo-shoots from magazines like Penthouse and Color Climax are also still freely available. It's telling that although Traci Lords has spent the past two decades condemning the porn industry, she still retains her porn pseudonym!

Real Name: Nora Louise Kuzma
Date of Birth: 07/05/1968
Place of Birth: Ohio, USA
Height: 1,70m/5’7”
Film Career: 1984-1987