Marilyn Chambers
Marilyn Chambers (April 22, 1952 – April 12, 2009) was an American pornographic actress, exotic dancer, model, actress and vice-presidential candidate. She was best known for her 1972 hardcore film debut Behind the Green Door and her 1980 pornographic film Insatiable. Although she was primarily known for her adult film work, she made a successful transition to mainstream projects. She has been called “porn’s most famous crossover.”
Chambers was relatively unknown prior to BTGD; however, the film made her a star. Green Door, along with Deep Throat, released the same year, and The Devil in Miss Jones, ushered in what is commonly known as the porno chic era. Chambers dreamed of having a career in mainstream films and believed her celebrity as the star of Behind the Green Door and the Ivory Snow girl would be a stepping stone to other endeavors. “The paradox was that, as a result of Green Door, Hollywood blackballed me,” she said later. “[Green Door] became a very high-grossing film…But, to a lot of people, it was still a dirty movie; for me to do anything else, as an actress, was totally out of the question. I became known as a porno star, and that type of labeling really hurt me. It hurt my chances of doing anything else.”
Chambers won the starring role in director David Cronenberg’s low-budget Canadian movie Rabid, which was released in 1977. Cronenberg stated that he wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the film lead, but the studio vetoed his choice because of her accent. Spacek’s film Carrie was released during this film’s production and proved to be a massive hit (and a movie poster for the film appears when the main character walks by a movie theater). The director says that the idea of casting Chambers came from producer Ivan Reitman, who had heard that Chambers was looking for a mainstream role. Reitman felt that it would be easier to market the film in different territories if the well-known porn star portrayed the main character. Cronenberg stated that Chambers put in a lot of hard work on the film and that he was impressed with her. Cronenberg further states he had not seen Behind the Green Door, prior to casting her.
“It was great working with David,” Chambers said in a 1997 interview. “He taught me a lot of things that were very valuable as an actress, especially in horror films. I found it useful in sex films, too!”
Although she had tried for several years to shed her image as a porn star, Chambers returned to the adult film industry with 1980’s Insatiable. In the film she played actress, model and heiress Sandra Chase whose appetite for sex is, as the title suggest, insatiable. Sandra is getting ready to make a movie and her manager, played by Jessie St. James, is working on getting some big names to appear alongside Sandra. The story is told in a series of flashbacks which detail Sandra’s sexual encounters.
In the 2004 United States Presidential election, Chambers ran for Vice President on the Personal Choice Party ticket, a quasi-libertarian party. She received a total of 946 votes.
On April 12, 2009, Chambers was found dead in her home near Santa Clarita, California. The coroner’s autopsy revealed that Chambers died of a cerebral hemorrhage and an aneurysm related to heart disease. Chambers was ten days away from her 57th birthday. Painkiller hydrocodone (Vicodin) and anti-depressant Citalopram were found in her bloodstream but not enough to cause death.
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