Nina Hartley

Hartley was born in Berkeley, California[3] to a Lutheran father, Louis Hartman, and a Jewish mother, Blanche Hartman (née Gelders),[6] whose family was from Alabama.[7] Her maternal grandfather, Joseph Gelders, was a University of Alabama physics professor who was a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) party member in the 1930s.[8] Hartley's parents were members of the CPUSA[6] who converted to Buddhism when she was young.[9] Her father was blacklisted in 1957 for his communist beliefs.[10]

Hartley grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area,[11][12] and as a teenager self-identified as a feminist.[3] After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1977, she attended San Francisco State University's undergraduate nursing school and graduated magna cum laude in 1985.[11][13] She was a registered nurse[14][9] until her license expired in 1986.[15]

Hartley has said she saw the 1976 erotic film The Autobiography of a Flea by Sharon McNight, alone at a theater in San Francisco and chose her life's work: making porn.[16][6] In 1982, during her sophomore year of nursing school, she started working as a stripper at the Sutter Street Theatre, and later the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre.[17][12] She began working in pornography in 1984,[14][18] which she saw as a way to make a career of having sex.[3] Her pornographic film debut was in Educating Nina, where she was cast and directed by fellow performer Juliet Anderson.[17][19][20] In 1994, she began her line of instructional videos that are marketed under the Nina Hartley's Guide brand.[21] Hartley has been described by news outlets as "one of the best-known actresses in the industry"[19] and "a legend in the adult world".[5]

Explaining how Marie Louise Hartman became Nina Hartley, she stated in an interview that she chose the name "Nina" because it was easy for Japanese tourists to say during the time she was a dancer in San Francisco; "Hartley" was chosen as it was close to her own real last name as possible and because she "wanted a name that sounded like that of a real person."[12] She stated that when she got into the adult business, she was blessed with two popular fetish items: "big, baby-blue eyes and that round butt with a high, small waist", with her buttocks becoming her trademark.[22]

In the 1980s and early 1990s, she starred in several of the Debbie Does film series spin-offs such as Debbie Duz Dishes (1986) and Debbie Does Wall Street (1991).[23] In 1992, she directed her first movie, Nina Hartley's Book of Love.[24] For many years, she also toured the United States and Canada as a stripper and made personal appearances at adult shops.[23][21]

Hartley played the part of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 pornographic parody film Who's Nailin' Paylin?,[10] with Lisa Ann in the role of Sarah Palin.[25] In 2010, she said, "Now I work with women who are younger than my breast implants."[18] As of 2015 Hartley was still actively performing in pornography,[17] and by 2017 she had appeared in more than one thousand adult films.[26]

Hartley has appeared in several documentary films: she was interviewed in The Naked Feminist (2003)[27][28] was featured in After Porn Ends (2012), and appears in Sticky: A (Self) Love Story (2016),[29] in which she discusses masturbation with regards to education, the forced resignation of Joycelyn Elders, and her opinions on the blackballing of comedian Paul Reubens after his arrest for masturbating in a public theater.

Las Vegas Weekly calls Hartley "a guiding force for a generation of feminist porn stars".[3] She began engaging in feminist activism in the 1980s[30] and has made frequent appearances at academic conferences, workshops, and in the media to promote sex positivity,[31] along with lectures at several universities.[21][32] As a feminist working in the pornography industry, she has said, "Pleasure is very, very powerful, very, very potent. You're no longer at the mercy of men when you understand that",[33] and "Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something men get out of you. Sex is something you dive into with gusto and like it every bit as much as he does."[34]

Hartley is a long-time board member of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation,[32][35] and has been involved in socialist activism.[36] Politically, Hartley describes herself as a democratic socialist, saying, "There are some things the federal government is essential for and some things best left to local government."[10]

Hartley has long been affiliated with the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), a labor union for pornographic film actors.[10] Before the rise to stardom of Jenna Jameson, Hartley had often been called on when television news programs and talk shows required an articulate, leading adult film actress to support the adult film industry's right to exist. Hartley and fellow pornographic actress Ona Zee have also spoken out against illegal drug use in the industry. Hartley was interviewed by Eric Schlosser for his book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market in which she was critical of anti-pornography legislation.[8]^: 179

Hartley acted in the 1996 Canadian film Bubbles Galore[37] and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.[5] In the 1997 film Boogie Nights, she played William H. Macy's character's serially unfaithful wife, who is murdered by him.[11][21] She later remarked, "The only movie I ever died in for having sex was a mainstream movie."[11] She also played Wanda, a sales clerk at a sex toy shop, in the 2017 punk comedy film Scumbag.[38]

In 2006, Hartley co-authored Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex with her husband Ira Levine. The book includes sections on sex toys, swinging, threesomes, dominance and submission, and erotic spanking.[11] Library Journal called the book a "well-written guide" that is "strong on both safe sex and a permissive approach", saying Hartley "handles the material frankly, accurately, and with sensitivity".[11]

Hartley is a self-described bisexual, swinger, and exhibitionist.[18][39] From 1981 to 2000, she was involved in a relationship with a man (a former Students for a Democratic Society leader) and a woman.[8]^: 179 She married her male partner in 1986; their divorce was finalized in 2003.[17] The same year, Hartley married Ira Levine, a director of porn films under the name Ernest Greene.[40] They are openly polyamorous.[41]

• Barbano, Nicolas (1999). Verdens 25 hotteste pornostjerner. Copenhagen: Rosinante. ISBN 87-7357-961-0. Features a chapter on Hartley
• Greenfield-Sanders, Timothy (2004). XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits. New York: Bulfinch Press. ISBN 0-8212-7754-5. Features an essay and introduction by Hartley
• Marvin, Louis (1987). The New Goddesses. Malibu, Calif.: AF Press. ISBN 0-912442-99-9. Features a chapter on Hartley
• McCumber, David (2000). X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers : A True Story of Sex, Money, and Death. New York: Pinnacle Books. pp. 139–149. ISBN 978-0-7860-1113-1.
• Morpheous; Hartley, Nina (2012). How to Be Kinkier: More Adventures in Adult Playtime. San Francisco, Calif.: Green Candy Press. ISBN 978-1-9311-6094-0.
• "Viva Nina!". Women and Revolution: Journal of the Women's Commission of the Spartacist League (PDF). Winter 1993 – Spring 1994. p. 13 – via Marxists.org.
• Warner, Brad (2010). Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between. Novato, Calif.: New World Library. ISBN 978-1-57731-910-8. Features an interview with Hartley

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nina Hartley.

• Official website
• Nina Hartley at IMDb
• Nina Hartley at the Internet Adult Film Database
• Nina Hartley at the Adult Film Database
• Nina Hartley on the Muck Rack journalist listing site