Lorelei Lee

She grew up in upstate New York, moved into the industry at nineteen, and eventually settled in San Francisco, which was at the time the center of gravity for exactly the kind of fetish and bondage work she gravitated toward. The stage name came from Lorelei, Marilyn Monroe's gold-digging, sharper-than-she-looks character — and whether that was deliberate commentary or just a name she liked, it aged interestingly. She went back to school, finished an undergraduate degree at San Francisco State, then kept going: an MFA in creative writing from NYU, then a law degree from Cornell. She has been publicly involved in sex worker advocacy and toured nationally with the Sex Workers' Art Show, which situates her firmly in a tradition of performers who treat the work as political as much as personal. She has also directed, not just performed — the camera-behind-the-camera role at the same company where she built her on-screen reputation. What she thinks now, from the other side of a law degree, she has not said publicly in any record that survives easily.