Traci Lords may go down in history as one of the most versatile and dynamic American women of all time. In her career life so far, she has worked as a model, singer, writer, producer, director, as well as an actress. She also came into the showbiz industry as a child prodigy. Now in her 50s, the energetic woman keeps waxing strong.
You will learn all the relevant facts about her as we explore her background details, career achievements and every other thing in-between.
Traci Lords’ Brief Profile
Traci Lords was born as Nora Louise Kuzma on May 7, 1968, in Steubenville, Ohio. She was born to Louis Kuzma – a Ukrainian American with Jewish roots and his wife Patricia Kuzma who has Irish ancestry. Tracy is the second to be born in a family with four daughters. Her elder sister is named Lorraine while her two younger sisters are Rachel and Grace.
When Traci was seven, her parents went through a divorce that saw her and her three sisters move with their mom to reside with their great-grandmom. Subsequently, the four girls hardly saw their parents as their father stayed away while their mother enrolled in Ohio University while working on a part-time job. This situation left Traci and her sisters to take care of themselves most of the time. This went on for close to five years.
Around the time she was 12, Traci Lords’ mother moved in with a new boyfriend of hers named Roger Hayes, taking her daughters along to stay in his apartment located in Redondo Beach California. While at fourteen years of age in 1982, Traci began to attend Redondo Union High School. However, she spent only roughly a year in high school before she dropped out and began to work as a nude model and porn actress at the age of 15.
Traci became pregnant in her freshman year in high school via a high school boyfriend of hers. At that time, her relationship with her mom was strained and she did not know who to confide in. Eventually, she opened up to her mother’s ex-boyfriend Roger Hayes (a drug addict), in spite of the fact that he had been abusing her sexually while they lived with him. At this time, Traci’s mother and Roger had broken up but while her two younger sisters moved to another apartment with their mother, Traci and her elder sister Lorraine refused to move with them.
Roger, after assisting her to abort her pregnancy, introduced her to a female friend to work as a babysitter. It was this female friend who offered to help Traci to get better opportunities by falsifying her age and using it to get a drivers’ license for her. Eventually, it was Roger and that friend of his who introduced Traci to posing nude under the management of World Modeling Talent Agency belonging to Jim South. She began to appear in magazines such as Velvet, Juggs, and Club. Eventually, after posing on a nude centrepiece photo for Penthouse’s 15th anniversary which became the top-selling issue in the magazine’s history, Traci Lord’s fame snowballed. With time, she also began to act in countless porn movies.
Eventually, Traci’s real age got to the authorities which got FBI to close down all the movies she had worked on and prosecute the companies behind them. After that, Traci decided to get acting training from Lee Strasberg Theater Institute which enabled her to go into the mainstream movie industry.
Movies And TV Shows
After the controversy that plagued her under-age career as a porn actress – and following her training at Lee Strasberg – Traci began to ply her trade in the legitimate sector of the industry. Her mainstream debut was in the 1988 science fiction horror comedy film, Not Of This Earth, where she had the lead role of Nadine Story. Her lone picture that was used in the theatrical release poster for the film. From that powerful start to her mainstream acting career, Traci went ahead to receive over 45 roles in films and TV shows between 1989 and 2018.
Some of her major roles in films were played in the 1990 teen-comedy Cry-Baby; Skinner (1993); Virtuosity (1995); Blade (1998); Zack And Miri Make A Porno (2008) and Excision (2012). Some of her major credits in TV include the ABC action-adventure series MacGyver, the FOX sitcom, Married…With Children, the HBO horror anthology, Tales From The Crypt, the ABC sitcom, Roseanne, the FOX primetime soap opera, Melrose Place, the NBC crime drama, Profiler, and The WB hit dramedy TV series Gilmore Girls among many more.
See Also: John Corby – Biography, Life, and Death
Love life
Traci Lords got married to Brook Yeaton in 1990 but the marriage crashed five years later in 1995. Again, she married actor Ryan Granger in 1999, but they broke up the following year. Then, for the third time, she married Jeff Gruenewald in 2002. So far, there is no report that the relationship has had issues.
Musical exploits
She is signed to Radioactive, Sea To Sun labels and has released four albums to date. Her genre cuts across pop, trance, and trip-hop. Her music projects so far include 1, 000 Fires (1995), 1000 Fires (1995), D.J. Erotic Mix (1997) and Sunshine (EP 2004).
Other career achievements
She shared her life story in her autobiography, Underneath It All (first published in 2003 by Harper Collins Publishers). She has also bagged many awards including Film Discovery Jury Award as Best Actress in 2001 and Fangoria Chainsaw Award as Best Supporting Actress in 2013.
Social media presence
She can be seen on social networks like YouTube, Deezer, Twitter, Facebook, and TuneIn.
