Linda Lovelace

Linda Boreman (January 10, 1949 - April 23, 2002) became famous as a pornographic actress under the stage name Linda Lovelace in the 1972 film Deep Throat. She later became an advocate against pornography.

Boreman starred in several minor hard core porn movies before Deep Throat, the most successful porn movie ever. She then appeared in a number of soft core movies, which were flops. Boreman maintained that she was not paid for her work in Deep Throat and her husband received only $1,250 (1972 US dollars) even though the film would eventually gross an estimated $600 million.

For many years since the film debuted, Boreman claimed that her first husband, Chuck Traynor, whom she divorced in 1973, had forced her into pornography at gunpoint. Traynor went on to marry and guide the career of Marilyn Chambers, another major porn star. According to Boreman's 1980 autobiography Ordeal, the couple's relationship was plagued by violence, rape, prostitution and, of course, pornography.

Boreman testified before congressional committees investigating pornography and also gave lectures on college campuses and elsewhere, always decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices of the pornography industry.

On April 3, 2002, she sustained severe injuries in a car accident in which her sport utility vehicle rolled over. On April 23, 2002 she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado.

See also: sex worker, sex industry