Traci Lords biography 2022

Actress Traci Lords

Traci Lords biography


Traci Lords was born on May 7, 1968, in Steubenville, Ohio, and her real name is Nora Louise Kuzma.

It's strange to think that today Traci Lords has fans who listen to her music - without any idea that she has a different past.

Her past has been carefully swept under the carpet in the USA.

But here's the real story of the woman we know and love as Traci Lords:

She was regularly beaten by her father, an alcoholic Jew from Ukraine (she has written a chapter about her upbringing in Suzanne Sommers' anthology book "Wednesday's Children"). Along with her mother and three sisters, she moved to Redondo Beach, California, where she began using drugs.

At the age of fifteen, she ran away from home and soon after appeared in Los Angeles. Via a fake certificate she had obtained from an acquaintance, she had new papers drawn up that added several years to her age, and a forty-year-old boyfriend posed as her stepfather. Her later boyfriend, Tom Byron, estimated 16-year-old Traci's age at 22. Soon she had a career as a model and became a sixteen-year-old fold-out girl in Penthouse (September 1984).

While filming her debut film, a softcore role in Richard Mailer's "What Gets Me Hot!" (1984), the director had to stop her from crossing the line.

She enjoyed the attention and decided afterward that when she felt like it, she might as well get paid for it. 

On the video screen, Traci Lords appears at the same time energetic and mechanical, with round shapes and constant whining sounds.

Fans love Traci Lord's sounds. Sampled examples are included in the "Stone Cold Bush" cut on The Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother's Milk album and "Those Young Girls" on the Chemical People's So Sexist! album.

Together with Ginger Lynn, she was one of the absolute top names in the industry in the mid-eighties, and the two appeared several times in videos.

Traci produced several of her own films and was seen worldwide with Stephen Jean Charles's Traci Je t'aime (1986), her only film made at eighteen, and Cartier's Traci Takes Tokyo (1996). She received up to 2,500 dollars for a day's work and earned up to half a million dollars in her two years in the business.

In May 1986, shortly after her 18th birthday, she was arrested by the FBI. Someone had told them about her actual age. The legal age for sexual intercourse in the United States is eighteen. But she had been acting in films since she was sixteen.

The revelation of Traci Lord's age sparked panic in the industry.

Nervous shopkeepers immediately removed all her films from the video shelves, and quite a few producers feared, with good reason, whether they would now go to jail. They all walked free, but not without nasty lawsuits and millions of dollars in losses (via attorney fees and illegal, i.e., unsalable Traci Lords movies).

She was not even accused of breaking the law. Today, she is one of the less famous people in the industry.

This may also be due to particular envy. After drama lessons at The Lee Strassberg Institute in Los Angeles, she began a profitable career as a mainstream actor with Jim Wynorski's sci-fi horror "Not of This Earth" (1988).

Primarily in low-budget action/horror/sci-fi productions. But also roles in several TV series, i.a., "Married... With Children" (19989-95), "Melrose Place" (1995), "Roseanne" (1994-95), and Profiler (1997-98).

Add to that supporting role in prominent Hollywood productions such as the John Waters comedies "Cry-Baby" (1990) and "Serial Mom" ​​(1994), John Power's miniseries Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers" (1993), and Stephen Norrington's vampire film "Blade" (1998) with Wesley Snipes.

Traci Lords hasn't done a single nude scene since "Not of This Earth." It has required pride and stubbornness to repeat no time and time.

Traci has often lied about her career. In interviews, she has claimed that she only acted in "a handful" of scenes while under the influence of drugs and that these are the same scenes recycled in all her films. Experts estimate the actual number to be over 150! In the official biography on her website, her modeling career is not even mentioned. Who does she think she's fooling?

In 1995, she debuted as a singer with the dance album "1,000 Fires", containing the hit singles Fallen Angel (with which she appears in Brett Leonard's film Virtuosity, 1995) and Control.

She makes guest appearances on The Ramones' Somebody to Love and Manic Street Preachers' Little Baby Nothing.

All excellent. But only a fool would deny that it is her very young, far-reaching past that really sparks the interest of little Nora Louise Kuzma of Steubenville, Ohio.

It is virtually impossible to acquire films with Traci Lords today, as the movie cannot be sold anymore. As you know, she was a minor when they were produced, so that's why some big online stores don't sell these films for fear of the American authorities.


last updated October 2022

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