Traci Lords Why Is She Famous? - Her first film was What Gets Me Hot!

Why Is She Famous?

Traci Lords is best known as the most famous and successful underage adult film star, having done 100 movies as a teenager. She has since tried to go mainstream, while appearing in low-budget movies and the occasional high-budget ones like Blade (1998).

Editors' Rating: 75

Readers' Rating

Sexiness

79

Traci Lords' past certainly raises the eyebrows of quite a few men. In fact, she remains one of the most searched celebrities on the Internet (including on AskMen.com). Though she plays down her sexiness, she won't have a hard time finding men who'll swear by her sex appeal.

Success

72

According to porn industry insiders, Traci Lords made over $1 million from her X-rated movies, and even had video companies give her $10,000 a month, furnish her with an apartment and a Mercedes. Traci's take is that she made only $20,000 during her time in the industry.

At least she managed to get some work in mainstream roles, including calendars, posters, acting jobs in such C-list films as Extramarital, Me and Will, You're Killing Me and Epicenter. Though those films were trash, she still managed a small but memorable role in the Stephen King TV series The Tommyknockers. She was also a contestant on the TV reality show Celebrity Paranormal Project in 2006.

Quotes

"If you're sexy, everybody will love you. That's what I wanted -- for everybody to love me." -Traci Lords, on her tainted past.

Elite Partners

• IMDB.com: Traci Lords
• Wikipedia.org: Traci Lords

Biography

Traci Elizabeth Lords was born May 7, 1968, in Steubenville, Ohio, originally named Nora Louise Kuzma. The Traci Lords we know today, controversy and all, is a combination of Nora's high school best friend, Traci; the character Katharine Hepburn played in The Philadelphia Story; and the last name Lords, after her favorite actor from her favorite show, Hawaii Five-O's Jack Lords.

traci lords the porn star
Traci Lords moved to Lawndale, California, with her mother and three sisters, fleeing her alcoholic father. While a student at Redondo Union High School, she ran away from home at the age of 15 after having had an abortion. While living with a man in his 40's, Traci went to Jim South's World Modeling Agency (for adult movies) with a friend's sister's birth certificate, which read Kristie Elizabeth Nussman, age 22.

Her "roommate" accompanied her to Jim South's Agency (he claimed to be her stepfather), and convinced Mr. South that Traci would soon be a porno movie star, and after Traci stripped and showed that she was certainly not shy, she was in.

Her first film was What Gets Me Hot! in 1984. By the time she was 18, she had starred in more than 100 porno movies, such as Open Up Traci, Two Timing Traci, Sex Fifth Avenue, and Holly Does Hollywood -- each gradually more graphic.

oh lordy, traci's busted
Traci Lords was a porno queen; she was recognized worldwide and got mobbed wherever she went. But when authorities found out that she was underage while in these movies, prosecutors arrested Traci as well as the owners of her porn movie agency, X-citement Video Inc., and the hundreds of films she appeared in were deemed illegal and taken off the shelves.

In 1984, Traci posed for a Penthouse centerfold, in the same issue that ultimately exposed Vanessa Williams, but the issue is also considered illegal.

The only "Traci" movie that is considered legal is Traci I Love You, which she sold to a distributor. She may have been just a porno actress, but Traci was also a businesswoman who wrote her scripts, and developed Traci Lords Productions along with her boyfriend at the time. The company produced movies such as Traci Takes Tokyo and Beverly Hills Copulator.

traci lords in the tommyknockers
Traci Lords left the porn scene for a while and returned in the late '80s to do television appearances and B-movies. She appeared in Wiseguy, Married... With Children and MacGyver, and movies like 1988's Not Of This Earth (her first mainstream movie), 1989's Fast Food, 1990's Cry-Baby, 1991's A Time To Die, Raw Nerve and Laser Moon, and the 1993 made-for-TV movie The Tommyknockers, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.

Among her many roles, the higher profile ones include those in the films Serial Mom (1994), Virtuosity (1995) and Blade (1998); a recurring role on Melrose Place in 1995; appearances on Roseanne, Nash Bridges; and a part as herself in D.R.E.A.M. Team (with Traci Bingham and Angie Everhart).

She apparently lost a role in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, to Sadie Frost Jude Law's ex-wife.

Traci is also a singer, who has contributed her vocals to the Manic Street Preachers' Little Baby Nothing, the Ramones' Somebody to Love, and performed songs for the movies Virtuosity and Mortal Kombat.

traci lords in celebrity paranormal project
In 2000 Traci Lords appeared in two flicks -- Epicenter and Certain Guys. She also appeared on TV's First Wave. In the next few years Traci could be seen in the movies Chump Change (2001), Home (2003), Frostbite (2005), and Crazy Eights (2006), as well as the TV shows Gilmore Girls and Celebrity Paranormal Project.

What else do you need to know?

Traci Lords - AskMen.com