Jane Esther Hamilton (born October 27, 1956) is an American former pornographic actress and current porn director who performed under the name Veronica Hart during the 1980s. She is sometimes credited as Jane Esther Hamilton, Jane Hamilton, V. Hart, Veronica Heart, Victoria Holt, Kathryn Stanleigh, Randee Styles or just Veronica. Hart is a member of the AVN Hall of Fame.

Hart was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hart made adult movies from 1980 until 1984, and is best known for her performances in Amanda by Night, Wanda Whips Wall Street, Roommates and A Scent of Heather. Today, she directs, edits and produces adult films, while making occasional (non-sexual) cameos in both mainstream and adult productions.

Events in her life were the inspiration for the custodial problems of character Amber Waves in Boogie Nights (1997), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Veronica went on to play a judge in "Boogie Nights," appearing in the scene where Amber and her husband are arguing during a hearing about their son. Veronica would later appear in another Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Magnolia.

Traci Lords (born Nora Louise Kuzma on May 7, 1968), also known as Traci Elizabeth Lords and Tracy Lords, is an American film actress, producer, film director, writer and singer. She first achieved notoriety for her underage appearances in pornographic videos and Penthouse magazine (she was 16 years old in her first movie), later becoming a successful television and B-movie actress.

Nora Louise Kuzma was born in Steubenville, Ohio to Louis and Patricia Kuzma (née Briceland). Her stage name is said to be a tribute to Katharine Hepburn's character Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story or from the first name of her high school best friend Traci and the last name of her favorite actor from Hawaii Five-O, Jack Lord. She was raped at the age of ten. At 12, she fled from her abusive alcoholic father to Lawndale, California, with her mother and three sisters. Her mother's new boyfriend, Roger, was a cocaine dealer who molested her. In 1983, she began attending Redondo Union High School.

At the age of 15, Nora had dropped out of school and was living with her mother's ex-boyfriend, Roger. Posing as her stepfather, he helped her respond to classified ads requesting models. Using a false driver's license ID provided by Roger that stated she was 20 rather than 15, she started in the porn industry with Jim South at the World Modeling Agency in Sherman Oaks, under the name Kristie Elizabeth Nussman.

Jane Hamilton (born July 13, 1957) is an American novelist.

Hamilton lives in Rochester, Wisconsin. She grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, the youngest of five children. She graduated from Carleton College in 1979 as an English major. Her first published works were short stories, "My Own Earth" and "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending", both published in Harper's Magazine in 1983. "Aunt Marj's Happy Ending" later appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1984.

Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, was published in 1988 and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award in 1989.[1] The Book of Ruth was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1996, and it was the basis for a 2004 television film of the same title.

In 1994, she published A Map of the World, which was adapted for a film in 1999 and the same year was also an Oprah's Book Club selection. Her third novel, The Short History of a Prince, published in 1998, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998.[2] This book was also shortlisted for the 1999 Orange Prize.[3] In 2000, Hamilton was named a Notable Wisconsin Author by the Wisconsin Library Association.[4]

Jamie Gillis (born James Ira Gurman; April 20, 1943 – February 19, 2010) was an American pornographic actor, director and member of the AVN Hall of Fame.

Gillis was born in New York City into a Jewish family and graduated from Columbia University. He appeared in more than 470 movies as an actor." He also directed several adult movies. Openly bisexual, he appeared in many gay porn films, including a sex scene with another actor in the 1975 bisexual film The Story Of Joanna. Gillis also appeared in a mainstream Hollywood film, Nighthawks (1981) starring Sylvester Stallone in which he played Lindsay Wagner's boss.

He is a pioneer in the pornographic style known as Gonzo. In addition to starring in the first Buttman film, he also created the influential On The Prowl series. Featuring a porn star who rides in a limo looking for regular guys to have sex with, the video series was very popular and inspired a scene in the movie Boogie Nights. He also co-produced the popular Dirty Debutante series with fellow director and performer Ed Powers, as well as the Walking Toilet Bowl series of films that focused on golden showers and coprophilia.

Candida Royalle (born October 15, 1950) is an American producer and director of couples-oriented pornography and a former pornographic actress. She is member of the XRCO and the AVN Halls of Fame.

Initially trained in music, dance, and art in New York, with studies at the High School of Art and Design, Parson's School of Design and the City University of New York,^{[citation needed]} she eventually entered a career as a porn star, acting in some 25 movies.

In 1984, she founded Femme Productions, with the goal of making erotica based on female desire, as well as pornographic films aimed at helping couple therapy. Her productions are aimed more to women and couples than to the standard pornographic audience of men, and have been praised by counselors and therapists for depicting healthy and realistic sexual activity. Her company has been very successful, producing a series of products known to have a more artistic touch, lacking some aspects of common porn, like a focus on male ejaculation. She described her approach to film-making in an interview in the Wendy McElroy 1995 book XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography. Royalle has stated she tries to avoid "misogynous predictability," and depiction of sex in "...as grotesque and graphic [a way] as possible." She also criticizes the male-centredness of the typical pornographic film, in which scenes end when the male actor ejaculates. Royalle’s films are not “goal oriented” towards a final "cum shot"; instead, her films depict sexual activity within the broader context of women's emotional and social lives.