The porn star who took the world by — erm — storm this week after giving her first televised interview on 60 Minutes about an alleged affair she had with President Donald Trump in 2006 (the White House has denied an affair happened) has starred in many films you may not have heard of. Some of those film titles include Revenge of the Dildos, Da Vagina Code, and Big Boob Bonanza. (You're welcome.) But Stormy Daniels' non-porn acting roles are pretty widespread, and you've probably seen her work.
Daniels, 39, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, began working in the adult entertainment industry as a stripper in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when she was 17, per her website. She initially performed under the name Stormy Waters, later changing her last name to include a nod to the whiskey, Jack Daniel’s. She was reportedly a huge fan of the band Mötley Crüe — and derived "Stormy" from guitarist Nikki Sixx's daughter, Storm.
In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, had paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016 to keep her quiet about an alleged affair that she had with Trump in 2006. (Cohen has confirmed he paid Daniels the money, but claimed it was not related to the presidential campaign.) More recently, Daniels took the public stance (via a lawsuit) that her non-disclosure agreement (NDA) wasn't valid because Trump neglected to sign it, and she spoke to Anderson Cooper for the March 25 airing of 60 Minutes to detail her side of the story. (In response to the lawsuit, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that an arbitration proceeding against Daniels "was won in the president's favor.")
In addition to a brief 2010 Senate campaign, she has made several other non-pornographic influences on popular culture over the years.
The music video for Maroon 5's smash hit "Wake Up Call" from 2007 features Daniels in Los Angeles. The music video was released shortly after Daniels' alleged affair with Trump. To her surprise, she was heavily featured throughout the video.
"I was a little nervous, because I didn't know how much footage of me they were going to use," Daniels said in a 2007 interview with AVN, "but they used quite a bit, so I'm pretty excited."
Daniels answered a standard casting call, per AVN, but didn't think she'd ever get the part. She dissed the song, she told AVN, saying it was "the worst song to try to dance sexy to."
"Apparently I left a lasting impression," Daniels said, "because not only did they call me the next day to book me for the shoot, they actually gave me a bigger part."
Daniels played a porn star in Judd Apatow's 2005 romantic comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, in one of the film's club scenes, per her IMDb page, as well as guest roles in Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. Watching Apatow at work behind the camera even inspired her to try directing movies, Daniels told TheCut.com in 2016.
"I was ahead of the curve on the whole Stormy Daniels thing," Apatow joked on a March 22 episode of Conan. "She’s very nice and super smart and great to work with so we just kept asking her to be in all of our movies."
Daniels came very close to running for U.S. Senate against Louisiana's David Vitter, a Republican who had been linked to a prostitution ring in 2007. According to a draft of her campaign website, she planned to run by touting her experience as a self-made businesswoman who valued safe sex and sex-positivity.
Ultimately, she decided it was too expensive a venture to pursue — but she withdrew her candidacy with a powerful statement that comes eerily close to Trump's resonant message to middle America:
Over the past year, since the inception of the 'Draft Stormy' movement I have been fortunate and at times saddened to receive a crash education in our modern political system ... On one hand I have had the pleasure to meet and talk with so many hardworking Louisianans and to hear first hand their hopes and concerns for a better country ... What has also made a lasting impression on me unfortunately is the reality of a political system that seems wired to ensure that the voices of these good people are never truly heard ... And yet, in my travels around the state, I found a lot more people who are considered outsiders by those standards than insiders. In fact, many, many more. For just as these misguided arbiters of the mainstream view an adult entertainment star as an anathema to the political process so too do they view the dishwasher, the cashier or the bus driver.
It's likely we haven't heard the last of Ms. Daniels.
