There are lots of rumors around that Mad TV actress Nicole Sullivan appeared in a eary 90’s porn film. Check IMDB was she in porn? and other boards. I’ve also heard these stories from a few insiders in the adult industry. It never got “out” because she wasn’t that famous and wasn’t all that “Hot”. Any body else out there heard something?
Never heard this and would be surprised if it was true. She trained as a Shakespearean actor in London, and was doing guest spots on TV shows by the time she was 21. She got the MadTV gig a couple of years later.
eta: for definitive answers regarding Sullivan and others, there’s the porn equivalent of IMDB - IAFD. She’s not listed there.
Missed the edit window, but in case it’s not obvious, the site I linked is completely NSFW.
ISTR there was an early MadTV sketch where all the cast members were sitting around discussing unwise moves they made in their youth. Nicole came out with a huge laundry list of very bad things, most likely including a porno. Perhaps that’s the source of the rumor.
ETA: I found a transcript here. Different than what I remembered, but it does include the exchange:
Orlando: Hey! Hey, is this a foreign film? (Holds up film negatives to the light to see the pictures)
Nicole: Orlando, don’t! Don’t! Don’t!
Orlando: You were really limber.
Nicole: Remember that guy I told you I was dating? He was also a film, a, director, well, ok, a film, a film student. Really. It’s actually a very professional quality, a, production, and the clothes, a, clothing when when we were wearing it was, um, authentic pilgrim garb.
Orlando: I see that.
Artie: You were in Pilgrim Love Chain? I love that movie!
I’d watch it. She’s cute as a button.
There were a few women cast members of MadTV that I wouldn’t mind seeing in a spicy movie, but Nicole Sullivan wasn’t one of them.
The truly stunning Nicole Parker or cute-in-a-quirky-way Christa Flanagan, on the other hand…
Generally, it’s quite hard to find a definitive answer to such questions.
The US regulations of June, 2005 (18 U.S.C. § 2257) require that producers of ‘adult’ films obtain identification papers for each actor, maintain copies of that identification, and produce them upon demand.
Prior to that, adult film producers were not particularly careful about seeing such identification, or doing anything to verify it. In fact, they have often been accused of ‘winking’ at obvious forged papers, or even of helping underage actors obtain forged papers.
Even today, with the stricter legal regulations, there have been cases of actors using forged identification papers. Plus actors almost always use stage names, rather than their real names – even more so in adult films than other films.
So finding documentary evidence to identify an actor in both adult films and other TV or films is unlikely. Most times it happens is because someone is recognized. But given how many people look similar, it’s hard to prove this. Heck, understudies & stunt doubles are common in films, and usually not noticed by the audience. And nearly any actor that becomes famous will soon have a takeoff porn film starring someone who looks like them.
Where did you hear the rumor? I know this is a bit of a stretch but there’s a porn actress named (SFW) Nicole Sheridan who’s name is somewhat similar to Nicole Sullivan but very similar to mainstream actress Nicolette Sherdian
I’m just wondering if someone got the Nicole/Nicolette thing confused and somewhere along the line it turned into Nicole Sullivan. Like I said, it’s a bit of a stretch.
Watch her in “Barhopping” (which was made in 1998 but not shown on Showtime until 2000), and then tell me she wouldn’t have done a porno earlier when she needed money. I’ve seen the rumors on the internet recently, IMDB was she in porn? for one, but I’ve heard similar stories going all the way back to the late 1990’s. Since she’s very distinctive looking, and sounding, it’s hard to believe anyone could mistake her if they actually saw her in something.
That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. She played a character that was a barfly, and you see that as evidence that she’d done porn a decade earlier?
She did theater in NY and London as a teenager, was getting regular TV work right out of college, and was a regular on a network show in her early 20s. She’s one of the few actors who didn’t really have that lean period in her early years.
The porn genre is exhaustively documented, especially in the VHS-era and later. Could she have made an appearance under a fake name in a fringe film where she was generally unrecognized? It’s hard to prove a negative, but as t-bonham suggests, it’s a common marketing tactic to use porn actors that look like mainstream film actors, and even to promote them as being the same. If Nicole Sullivan did a porn film, there would be no secret about it. And if there was someone who looked passably like her, it’d be easy to find.
Might be useful if you could distinguish between an actress playing a part, and your fevered imaginings. :dubious:
Oh dear, yes. And there’s nothing wrong with quirky. :eek:
Well, she was raped on a subway car full of people in an episode of Law & Order - maybe that’s what people saw?
Yes! (Not the rape part – I’d hate that and would go all vigilante if the TV equalled true.) But super yes to NS doing porno. I’ll be up in my bunk pronto.