She became a mother and an anti-pornography advocate, but history will always note that Linda Boreman also once was Linda Lovelace--the porn starlet who catapulted to stardom with the classic 1970s skin flick Deep Throat.
Boreman died Monday from injuries she sustained in a Colorado car accident earlier this month. She was 53.
Boreman had been at Denver Health Medical Center since the April 3 crash, when her SUV veered off a highway and hit a mile-marker post, throwing her from the vehicle, the Associated Press reports.
Her daughter, Lindsay Marchiano, said she was taken off life support and died about 3 p.m. Monday. Larry Marchiano, Boreman's ex-husband, says he and their two children were at the hospital when she died.
"Everyone might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and as Linda," he told the AP. "We divorced five years ago, but she was still my best friend."
As Linda Lovelace, she became a household name starring in Deep Throat, the quintessential '70s porno flick, complete with poor lighting, cheesy, low-budget music and a costar named Harry Reems. In it, she played a woman who...well, the title basically explains it all.
But Boreman claimed it was never her choice to enter the porn industry. She met her first husband, Chuck Traynor, when she was 20 years old, and Boreman claimed he had forced her into pornography at gunpoint. For Deep Throat, Boreman said Traynor was paid $1,250 for the film, but she was paid nothing. The film went on to generate record grosses for a porno film, raking in more than $600 million.
The pair divorced in 1973, but by then, she had already suffered from rape and prostitution, according to her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal. The experience eventually led her to become an anti-porn advocate, testifying before congressional committees investigating the porn industry and speaking at colleges.
"She was a genuine person," family friend Brian Erwin tells Denver's Rocky Mountain News. "She was about a hell of a lot more than what the movie was about."
Boreman is survived by her father, John Boreman; daughter Lindsay Marchiano, 21; son Dominic, 25; sister Barbara and three grandchildren.