Stormy Daniels, Trump’s Unlikely Foe, Is ‘Not Someone to Be Underestimated’
March 25, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. It is she, some in Washington now joke, and not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who could topple Mr. Trump.
Those who know her well have registered the moment differently. Ms. Clifford has subsisted amid the seamier elements of a business often rife with exploitation and unruly fare; more than a few of her film titles are unprintable. But for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon. With an instinct for self-promotion, she evolved from “kindergarten circuit” stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s. Why would a piece of paper and an executive legal team set her back?
“She’s the boss, and everyone knew it,” Nina Hartley, one of the longest-working performers in the industry, said about Ms. Clifford.
“The Renaissance porn star,” said Ron Jeremy, once perhaps the most famous porn star of all.
“She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career,” said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the R-rated comedies “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” “She is not someone to be underestimated.”
In her own scripts, she has gravitated at times toward more ambitious productions, with elaborate plotlines and nods to politics.
Her standards on set can be exacting. Ms. Clifford does not mind firing people, colleagues said, banishing those who flub a scene or gild a résumé. She has demanded that an actor change his “dumb” stage name because it would look silly on her promotional materials. And she has coaxed singular performances from her charges, once guiding Mr. Jeremy through a scene in which he sang to her small dog.
Her competitive streak is not well concealed. After industry award nominations were announced one year, Ms. Clifford, who had amassed more than a dozen such honors, reminded an interviewer that she had been snubbed in the categories of cinematography and editing.
Credit
The Penthouse Club in Baton Rouge, La.
When opportunities have presented themselves outside her domain — a Maroon 5 music video, a public flirtation with a Senate run in Louisiana, an appearance at a celebrity golf tournament that included a future president — Ms. Clifford has made the most of the publicity, helping her carve out a comfortable life in the Dallas suburbs.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
She has a daughter, a third husband and an expensive hobby: equestrian shows. “She blends right in,” said Packy McGaughan, a trainer on the competition circuit. “A pretty girl riding a horse.”
More recently, inconspicuousness has been elusive in her life, but that is largely by design. Ms. Clifford has leveraged her newfound crossover fame into a national stripping tour, with scheduled dates through the end of the year. Not everyone is interested in attending.
“Pretty sure dumb whores go to hell,” someone wrote her on Twitter last week.
“Whew!” Ms. Clifford replied. “Glad I’m a smart one.”
Becoming Stormy
Classmates remember her as a serious, unobtrusive student — a natural fit at a competitive, racially diverse high school with an engineering focus. They knew her as Stephanie Gregory, the girl with the auburn hair. She liked horses and Mötley Crüe.
A quote beneath her senior yearbook photo hinted at high aspirations: “We will all get along just fine,” it read, “as soon as you realize that I am Queen.”
Credit
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
She thought she might be a veterinarian, or maybe a writer. “At first I thought I wanted to be a journalist,” Ms. Clifford said by phone on Friday in a 12-minute interview about her background.
Her parents, Sheila and Bill Gregory, divorced when she was about 4, leaving her largely in the care of her mother. She has not seen either parent in over a decade. Ms. Clifford, who later took her first husband’s surname, came from a “really bad neighborhood,” she said. She strained to remember exactly what she was like then.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“I don’t really know because I’m such a different person now,” she said. “I wasn’t like the popular girl, and I wasn’t the jock, and I wasn’t the ditz. I don’t know. I was just sort of in the middle of the road.”
She had offers from colleges, she has said. She had the test scores. The dancing started on a lark, of sorts. She was 17 and visiting a friend at a strip club in town, when she was persuaded to perform a “guest set.”
“I remember going on stage and thinking I was going to be a lot more afraid than I was,” Ms. Clifford said. “It was a slow night. There were like three people in the club, and I made enough money on two songs to make more than I did all week answering phones at the riding stable that I worked at.”
After high school, she found a professional home at the Gold Club in Baton Rouge, ingratiating herself with management as a reliable and magnetic performer, slogging through shifts from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. to earn perhaps a few hundred dollars a night.
Credit
Bill Haber/Associated Press
A calendar from 1999, in which Ms. Clifford straddles a Harley-Davidson as the dancer for July, still sits in the club, now called the Penthouse Club Baton Rouge.
“We knew,” said Chuck Rolling, who has long overseen operations there. “She was moving in a direction that was bigger than us. We’re in Baton Rouge. We’re not even New Orleans.”
Ms. Clifford eventually graduated to higher-profile dancing work, traveling across Texas and Louisiana to headline at strip clubs, before transitioning to pornography. She was both determined to bend the business to her will and conflicted about the long-term consequences. “I have very mixed emotions about stripping because stripping got me where I am now,” she said, at age 23, in an industry interview. “I own my own house, I own my own car, I own my own business. My credit is excellent. I have nice furniture and nice things.”
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
Still, the risks were clear. “I have just seen so many girls that it just ruins them,” she said then, “so many women who are 35, 40 years old and still stripping and have nothing to show for it, and that is just really sad.”
Ms. Clifford chose a more tempestuous stage name than most peers. She was not an Angel, or a Summer, or a Destiny. She was Stormy. And she was blond now.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Often, she kept to herself. Mike South, a director and columnist in the industry press, recalled encountering her in 2004, the year she was named “best new starlet” at the Adult Video News Awards, pornography’s equivalent of the Oscars. “She was sitting in the lobby, alone, and I just decided to be friendly,” said Mr. South, who invited her to a group dinner. “She looks at me and doesn’t crack a smile — expressionless — and says, ‘I am really not that friendly.’”
Credit
RNSvideomedia
Recognition came quickly anyway: awards, magazine spreads, feature roles and a contract with Wicked Pictures, a prominent pornography company. When she needed to, she charmed industry gatekeepers with a disarming wit.
“Are those real?” read a question posted on her website.
“Well,” she said, “you’re certainly not imagining them.”
In 2008, as Jenna Jameson, then the industry’s reigning monarch, announced her retirement at an awards show — “I will never spread my legs in this industry again,” she told the crowd — Ms. Clifford seemed to position herself next in line.
“I love you, Jenna,” Ms. Clifford said, accepting an award from Ms. Jameson moments later, “but I’m going to spread my legs a little longer.”
Other Horizons
It was a striking political slogan: “Screwing People Honestly.” But subtlety was never the idea.
In 2009, well into her turn as a director, Ms. Clifford sensed an opening beyond her typical orbit. David Vitter, a United States senator in her home state of Louisiana, was staggering toward a re-election year, laid low by a prostitution scandal. Ms. Clifford declared herself a Republican (though a Democratic operative was said to be involved in her efforts) and courted wide-scale media attention as she publicly weighed the merits of running. In remarks at the time, she connected her professional journey to the lives of service workers across the state.
“Just as these misguided arbiters of the mainstream view an adult entertainment star as an anathema to the political process,” she said, when she eventually decided against a bid, “so too do they view the dishwasher, the cashier or the bus driver.”
Credit
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The false-start campaign coincided with a turbulent moment in her personal life, exposing her to scrutiny in the mainstream press. In July 2009, Ms. Clifford was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence after hitting her husband, a performer in the industry, and throwing a potted plant during a fight about laundry and unpaid bills, according to police records. The husband, Michael Mosny, was not injured, and the charge was later dropped. Ms. Clifford had previously been married to another pornographic actor.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
She has since married another colleague in the business, Brendon Miller, the father of her now 7-year-old daughter. He is also a drummer and has composed music for her films. The family has been spotted often at equestrian events, where Ms. Clifford, the owner of several horses, has captured blue ribbons. Her preparations can be meticulous, matching her saddle pad with a horse’s bonnet colors.
“She takes it very personally that she does well,” said Dominic Schramm, a horse trainer and rider who has worked with her for several years. “She can be quite hard on herself.”
Ms. Clifford has not shown up at competitions since news broke in January that she accepted a financial settlement in October 2016 — weeks before the election — agreeing to keep quiet about her alleged intimate relationship with Mr. Trump. She has said the affair, which representatives of Mr. Trump have denied, began in 2006 and extended into 2007, the year she married Mr. Mosny.
Earlier this month, she escalated public attention by filing suit, calling the 2016 contract meaningless given that Mr. Trump had never signed it and revealing that the president’s personal lawyer had taken further secret legal action to keep her silent this year.
She has said that she does not want to expose the equestrian world — or her daughter — to the attendant circus trailing her now.
But the show has gone on for Ms. Clifford. She has danced across the country in recent months, from Las Vegas to Long Island. There are many more appearances to come. It would be foolish, she has said, to turn down more money than usual for the same work.
“She likes to maximize her profits,” said Danny Capozzi, an agent who manages her bookings, “not only on the feature dance bookings but at all times.”
Continue reading the main story
Share and Enjoy
Cryptic tweet from Stormy Daniels’ lawyer hints at photos tied to alleged Trump affair
March 24, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
CLOSE
Stormy Daniels is an adult film star who says she had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006, while he was married to Melania. Here’s what you may not know about her.
USA TODAY
Only days before porn star Stormy Daniels is scheduled to appear on CBS’ 60 Minutes to discuss her alleged affair with President Trump, her lawyer on Friday tweeted a tantalizing photo of a CD inside an opened safe, suggesting she has photos linked to the relationship.
In a caption accompanying the tweet, attorney Michael Avenatti writes: “If ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ how many words is this worth????? #60minutes #pleasedenyit #basta”
In an exchange of comments below the tweet, a writer suggests the CD in the photo only contains video of Daniels taking a lie detector test in 2011 about the alleged affair. Avenatti replies: “Nope. Enjoy Sunday and the days that follow…”
Daniels’ interview with 60 Minutes was taped two weeks ago and is scheduled for broadcast Sunday.
Trump, through his attorney Michael Cohen, has denied any affair with Daniels.
Posted!
Michael Cohen, an attorney for Donald Trump, arrives in Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 16, 2016. Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom President Donald Trump’s personal attorney acknowledged paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss her alleged sexual encounter with Trump, her manager xtold The Associated Press Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Cohen invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories: One, in which Cohen told The New York Times that he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.
- 1 of 10
- 2 of 10
- 3 of 10
- 4 of 10
- 5 of 10
- 6 of 10
- 7 of 10
- 8 of 10
- 9 of 10
- 10 of 10
Meet 19 women who claim affairs with Trump or accuse him of unwanted advances
More: Karen McDougal to Melania: I’m sorry for sleeping with Donald Trump
CLOSE
CBS will air its interview with adult film actress Stormy Daniels on Sunday’s “60 Minutes.” Daniels has said she had sex with Donald Trump before he became president and has been trying to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed. (March 21)
AP
The agreement, according to a document filed by Daniels in the lawsuit, includes a reference to “still images and/or text messages” of “certain ‘Confidential Information’ pertaining to Trump, who is referred to in the legal document by the alias David Dennison.”
Although Daniels has not discussed the alleged affairs since signing the nondisclosure agreement, she gave an interview in 2011 to In Touch magazine in which she discussed her relationship with Trump in detail. Although In Touch decided not to print the article seven years ago, it resurrected the material in February after news of the agreement surfaced and published the original article in full.
The Avenatti tweet comes one day after a former Playboy model, who claims to have had a sexual affair with Trump over a decade ago, apologized to first lady Melania Trump in an interview on CNN, admitting she knew he was married during the alleged tryst.
Karen McDougal talked about her alleged affair on Anderson Cooper 360 and the lawsuit she filed Tuesday to be freed from a deal she said she made to remain silent about their alleged relationship.
Posted!
Summer Zervos: The former “Apprentice” contestant has accused the president of sexual misconduct, including kissing and groping her in the years after she left the show. She has filed suit against him, saying he made defamatory remarks about her after she came forward with her story.
Seen here, Summer Zervos, left, stands with her lawyer Gloria Allred outside the New York County Criminal Court on Dec. 5, 2017, in New York. The judge in the case allowed on March 20, 2018, Zervos’ defamation suit against Trump to proceed.
- 1 of 14
- 2 of 14
- 3 of 14
- 4 of 14
- 5 of 14
- 6 of 14
- 7 of 14
- 8 of 14
- 9 of 14
- 10 of 14
- 11 of 14
- 12 of 14
- 13 of 14
- 14 of 14