Born in Steubenville, Ohio, Nora Louise Kuzma (born May 7, 1968) fled her alcoholic father with her mother and three sisters and moved to California; at the time she was twelve-years-old. At the age of fifteen, Nora moved in with her mother’s ex-boyfriend, a drug dealer named Roger. Nora had been raped when she was ten, and then molested regularly from age eleven on. Her mom, who saw Roger ogle Nora--pulling her top down and calling her breasts “eggs”--did not protect her from his advances and did nothing to prevent her from living with him at such a young age.
Nora Kuzma becomes Traci Lords
Roger, who posed as her "step-father," saw an ad and brought Nora to meet Jim South, an adult modeling agent. He promised her work but needed to dispatch with two minor details: proof of age and a new name. The name on the driver license that was “proof” that she was twenty-two years old was Kristie Nussman, which was no more glamorous than Nora Kuzma. She picked the name “Traci” from a friend back in Ohio. Her last name became “Lords”--named for Jack Lord who starred in her favorite TV show, Hawaii Five-O. She added the “s” to make it “Lords.” That’s how Traci Lords was born.
Traci Lords, 16-year old Penthouse model
Her first job was a photo shoot for a men’s magazine in which she role-played a “schoolgirl” and was paid $250. From then on she had steady work as a nude model and then landed a modeling session that got her in the centerfold of Penthouse magazine in September of 1984--and a $5,000 paycheck to go with it. A sophomore at Redondo Union High School when the Penthouse issue hit the newsstands, she dropped out and bought herself a Corvette. Please click here for a photo montage of Traci and nude photos of her.
Traci Lords works in porn biz
Before long she was in porn movies. Her first, What Gets Me Hot, was released in 1984. Drinking screwdrivers to work up her nerve, she earned $900 for two days work on the set. Within her first six months in the biz she had performed in twenty XXX films.
“I wasn’t acting for a camera,” she wrote. “I was acting out….I was vengeful, even savage, in sex scenes…At the ripe old age of sweet 16 I was nothing short of a sexual terrorist. Porn was a power trip for me.”
Lords appears in over 100 adult films, wins XXX Oscars
Lords became a star and got top billing on many films made in 1985 and 1986. She won several porn Oscars. Appearing in over 100 adult films, Lords claims that she did less than 30 total porn shoots. The sex scenes were edited and repackaged regularly. Lords says that she earned only $35,000 during her porn career. Producers say, however, that the total was around $1 million. Lords claims that those years are a blur from the vodka and cocaine she used to cope. Among her adult films are New Wave Hookers (1985) and Beverly Hills Copulator (1986).
In an interview in 2003 on the Nerve website, Lords said that by the time she began working in porn, she “was the perfect target for that kind of exploitation, because I was hungry. I was greedy for attention….I wanted to be loved; I wanted to be part of a community. As twisted as it may seem, I found all that in the porn world.”
Busted, rehab, Traci puts spotlight on porn biz
She was arrested shortly after turning eighteen. The police knew everything. At 90 pounds, she was strung-out, sexed-out and heading for a breakdown at the “ripe old age” of eighteen. Ashamed of the attention her arrest brought to her mother and three sisters, she apologized to her family. This was the mother who knew--knew she was living with Roger at fifteen, knew about the modeling, and knew about the porn--but didn’t try to stop any of it.
Lords cooperated with the police, giving details on everyone in the porn biz she came in contact with professionally. The girl who used a fake ID to get her foot--and other parts--in the door of the “low key” adult entertainment biz was now helping to bring it down. Porn production, marketing and distribution companies on both coasts found themselves the recipients of search warrants and subpoenas courtesy of the girl who wanted to be “loved.”
Her videos were now considered child porn and the government ordered them pulled from circulation and destroyed. The under-aged teen who “wanted to be part of a community”--and “found [it] in the porn world”--had turned it on its head and was now heading for rehab and therapy.
More controversy: porn made after she turned 18
The movie, Traci I Love You, has been another controversial aspect of Lords' life. Selling the rights for a reported $100,000, she was profiting from her former profession post-scandal, while publicly “regretting” making XXX films and criticizing the adult film industry. But in her 2003 autobiography, Underneath It All, she explained herself:
"I sold that…movie…and with it bought myself some shelter from the storm….I hated the fact that I made it possible for someone to go into a video store and rent it. But selling that film gave me some control over my life."
Traci Lords goes legit, performs in movies and TV shows
After getting out of rehab, Lords began taking acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Lords crossed-over from porn into mainstream entertainment, and has appeared in several critically acclaimed films. She starred in the remake of Roger Corman’s Not of This Earth. Later on, she was in John Waters’ Cry-Baby. She also had roles in Blade, Tommyknockers, Black Mask 2: City of Masks, and Chump Change. At the U.S. Comedy Arts Fair she won a Best Actress Award for Chump Change.
Lords was also working steadily in TV shows, including Married… with Children, MacGyver, Gilmore Girls, and Will & Grace. She had recurring roles in Profiler, Melrose Place, Roseanne, and Manic Street Preachers. She began a solo singing career in 1995 with an album entitled 1000 Fires. Her single, “Control” topped out at #2 on the Billboard dance charts. “Control” was featured in the 1995 movie, Mortal Kombat.
The actress became a mother in 2007 when she gave birth to Joseph Gunnar, her first child with husband Jeff Lee. She continues to work in film and TV show. The former teen porn star is now a "mature" 42-years-old and works regularly in movies and TV.
Sources
Lords, Traci Elizabeth. Underneath It All. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Eric Brothers - Eric Brothers' forthcoming book,The Berlin Ghetto, will be published by The History Press in the U.K. in 2012.
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