Traci Elizabeth Lords (born Nora Louise Kuzma; May 7, 1968) is an American actress and singer. She has starred in TV series such as Tales from the Crypt, Roseanne, Profiler, and First Wave. She has also appeared in films such as Skinner (1993), Virtuosity (1995), Blade (1998), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), and Excision (2012), which earned her a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actress, Fright Meter Award, and a CinEuphoria Award.
Lords recorded the song "Love Never Dies," which was featured on the soundtrack to the film Pet Sematary Two (1992). She was signed to Radioactive Records and subsequently released her debut studio album, 1000 Fires (1995). The lead single "Control" peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart and a remix was included on the soundtrack to the film Mortal Kombat (1995), which was eventually certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
At the age of 15, she used fake identity documents to enter the sex industry, where she began appearing in pornographic magazines and films. She was featured in the September 1984 edition of Penthouse as its centerfold. She has appeared in an estimated 75 adult films and videos. Her father's parents were of Ukrainian descent, while her mother was of Irish ancestry. Louis was employed as a steelworker. Lords has one elder sister and two younger sisters. Her parents divorced when she was seven years old and Lords moved with her mother and three sisters to her great-grandmother's house. Following the divorce, her alcoholic, abusive father got partial custody. Around that same time, her mother enrolled at the College of Steubenville, now the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and became employed part-time.
When Lords was 13, she moved with her mother, her mother's new boyfriend, and sisters to Redondo Beach, California. She did not see her father for many years after. In September 1982, she began attending Redondo Union High School but dropped out at age 15 to enter the porn industry. During her early school years, Lords developed a rebellious attitude. She was angry at her mother and found a father figure in her mother's boyfriend Roger Hayes, as she calls him in her autobiography. He was a drug abuser and molested Lords in her sleep. According to Lords, this event as well as a rape by a 16-year-old boy in school she had been seeing was what eventually drove her into pornography. However, in an earlier book proposal titled Out of the Blue: The Traci Lords Story, Lords made no claim of childhood sexual assault; she wrote that her father's parenting skills drove her into pornography. Either way, after her mother broke up with Hayes due to his drug use, her mother began dating Hayes' friend. Lords refused to follow them to a new place and was left with her older sister Lorraine. Her mother and two younger sisters eventually found a new apartment.