HOME

 



Kelly Nichols entered porn in the late '70s, left in 1986 and then returned a few years later for several performances in bondage and domination flicks.

Coming from a small suburb of LA, with five older brothers, Nichols grew up a tomboy. She left home at age 18 and moved to Hollywood where she opened up a copy of The Free Press. Wanting to make money so she could attend art school, Kelly answered the ad. It turned out to be a massage parlour disguised where men take photos of the girls and negotiate a price for sex.

"I was there for a week, just taking pictures, not letting the guys touch me. I wasn't making money. The other girls were coming away with $500 a night. So one girl finally told me what was going on (laughs). So I quit. But I was advanced enough that taking my clothes off in front of guys didn't bother me. And I was making $50 a night instead of $25 as a secretary."

Then Nichols read an ad for Sunset International. "Reb got me my first real professional modeling jobs. Boy, some of the doozies they threw at you. Little girl from the suburbs and you have photographers chasing you around the house. Craziness. But it was good training." (Adam)

The brunette broke into porn movies a few years later in Chuck Vincent's Bon Appetit. Vincent's favorite actress, Kelly did many of her best films with him, including Games Women Play, Roommates, Puss n'Boots and In Love.

Kelly moved to New York in 1979 to repair her first marriage. "A desperate emotional move... My husband introduced me to Chuck Vincent, who was looking for a female lead and male lead in an X movie. Chuck wanted me but not him, but I did it with his [husband's] blessing, which was important to me. And then down the line he freaked and left for Texas…."

Chuck offered Nichols $12,000 and two weeks in Europe. Kelly needed the money and the opportunity for a new beginning. "They wanted me to be the lead in a picture…. I had no confidence left and this helped restore it. They had seen my two Penthouse layouts and decided they wanted a new face."

Vincent shot two weeks in Europe, waited a month, shot a week of straight scenes in New York and then crammed all the sex scenes into one week. When finally confronted with a week of back to back sex, Kelly approached it like a football game. "I go from here to here, and at the end I get the rest of the money.

"My first sex scene was funny because they threw at me Jack Wrangler [gay porn star]. Jack and I are friends now, but then I didn't know what to expect. They'd set up the whole situation, like, "He's gay, so be kind." We were supposed to have sex in a car. I knew I should probably get him hard, but he said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it myself." He got himself hard and said, "Now, when I say now, I want you to put your head down there, right around it, and I'll just come in your face." It was all done for me.

"You can be vulnerable in porn, as much as you think it's only acting. I had just met Jerry Butler and he was very studious. He wanted to act well and he helped me be more serious about my character - 'cause I was laughing at her the whole film [In Love]. And our love scenes had to be tender. I'm a sucker for romance anyway, and with Jerry it hit a nerve. He was a good fit. You've heard porn stars talk about 'They shut off the cameras and we kept going?' Well, Jerry and I did. And it started to scare me a bit. I was thinking, 'Come on, don't be too uncool, you've got this old man at home, just calm down and enjoy it. But God, this guy's hot.'

Kelly felt troubled by the attention she earned for spreading her legs. "I didn't know I had a pretty face and I hated my body. So how did I think I was a porn star, making my body naked and putting on makeup and being called beautiful.

"I'd go to shoots and drink because I needed to feel calm. I think 25 was a watermark year, because you're a quarter of a century old, and you think, "What do I do when I grow up? In five years I'll be 30, and people aren't going to tolerate this..." (Adam)

Kelly did three SAG films in the summer of 1983, finding that producers in New York did not care about her porn background. She appeared in Model Behavior, Unknown and C.H.U.D. - Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. A few years later, Nichols played Jessica Lange's stunt double in the remake of King Kong.

"My first husband met me after I'd done some skin magazines. There was always some bone of contention, some kind of jealousy happening. It seems to happen with men in general, and I don't blame them. It all comes down to that if I had to, I could always sell my body and make money. And men - unless they're gay - can't. But my second husband [Tim Connelly] worked at Show World in a live sex show. He has sold his body, he's been there. Also, he used to live with Helen Madigan, who was a porn star for a while, so he's dealt with porn star trips. He was with Helen four years before he got me. He was a musician at night and did shows with Helen during the day. So he got to understand that side of it.

"These relationship problems happen so often in porn. Even the nicest guy will just at one point get jealous of your career, not understanding it's just a job. Now if I come home I can tell my old man, 'Hey, I couldn't believe it. Today on the set I came with Michael Knight.' And he'd go, 'Really, wow!' I've never seen a man who hasn't been there himself able to absorb it on a gut level. The funny thing is, I feel it myself, that little twinge of jealousy. Since we've been married I've gotten him bit parts in films and he's done two sex scenes. And I had a twinge. I made him promise he won't do more than bit parts. Let's just have one porn star to a family. (Laughs)" (Adam)

Kelly battles her weight. "I go through binge-purge periods, generally in conjunction with certain things I do. For example, around the time I made The Mistress I had just had several horrible things happen to me, and I put on weight. This was around the time I joined the Marines.

"I went through the physical and got accepted. That's what Chuck Vincent wrote Puss n'Boots about. He owned the title but never had a story to go with it, so when he heard about my joining the Marines, he flipped and decided to do this film. I was so freaked out that I needed something from the outside to tell me what to do. My parents weren't around and I was emotionally paralyzed, incapable of handling my own life. All sorts of weird stuff had happened to me - a bad relationship, a horrible abortion, an attack on my house.

"It had nothing to do with the business. It was that my own life was not formulated in anyway I could recognize.

"Samantha Fox is like me. We're both excess people. I've had a bout with drugs. Samantha did too. You have to find a substitute. For me, it was having a base. I finally found someone - my husband who could totally complement me, give me the strokes that I need in certain areas and push me in others. I come from a big family, so I found that I need people around me. When I was single I'd seek company but it wasn't always the right kind. With Samantha, the outlet she found was exercise. That's her drug right now. We go to the same gym and she's incredible." (Adam)

Roommates marked a turning point for Kelly Nichols. "I started to get hold of my life. After Games Women Play I had to be in a real good film, and Roommates put me right up there.

If you want to last in this business more than five years, do not do what I am doing. Do not cash in. But if you're thinking about cashing in for a couple of years, you can make all these films like I'm doing and go out in a blaze of glory. Veronica Hart did a lot of films in three years - and then stopped.

"But if you want to last ten years, do not party heavy. Space out the films. Otherwise, you're going to overdose the public. I learned that working with magazines. Guys do not want to jerk off all the time to the same girl. It's like having a girlfriend. They want new faces. If you can keep changing your look, that's fine. That's what I did as a magazine model. I was called The Girl of a Thousand Faces. (Laughs)"

Kelly didn't socialize much with her peers. "You fall into trying to get work on your off-work time, going to parties just to be seen... A small incestuous industry with lots of gossip. What happens is you start comparing yourself with other stars, reading articles about yourself in magazines, going crazy when you read something bad. It's like being a straight star and reading the National Inquirer."

Kelly feels glad that she's not recognized on the streets. "The industry has given me the best clarity I've ever had. I have a street sense I never had before. I have a home base, a husband, and money in the bank. And I have an insight into my own sexuality that, considering my repressive background, I never could have had otherwise. This industry which has made so many people crazy has made me sane."

After retiring from hardcore, Nichols settled down with her boyfriend, author John Skipp, in rural York, Pennsylvania, and had two children. She eventually followed John to Los Angeles when his screenwriting career took off with such hits as Nightmare on Elm Street 4.

Kelly Nichols now goes by her real name, Marianne Walter, and lives with pornographer "Wesley Emerson." She does make-up for pornographic and mainstream productions.