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Linda Susan Boreman (January 10, 1949 – April 22, 2002), better known by her stage name Linda Lovelace, was a pornographic actress in the 1972 film Deep Throat, who went on to leave the pornography industry and became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.

Deep Throat was notable for beginning a brief fad of porn chic; it was also the inspiration for Bob Woodward's name of his secret Watergate source, W. Mark Felt. Boreman later stated that she regretted her pornographic career and had been violently coerced into pornography by her then-husband, Chuck Traynor; she also renounced her stage name and reverted to using her real name in public. The popularity of the film, however, made her a cultural icon against her will, appearing in archive footage in many other films.

Although she later became an advocate against pornography, Boreman is still famous for her depictions of deep throat fellatio. While she continued to use the Lovelace name for commercial purposes, the first sentence of Boreman's book, Ordeal, and a statement she repeated for the rest of her life, was "My name is not Linda Lovelace."

Boreman attended Catholic schools, including St. John the Baptist in Yonkers, New York, and Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale, New York. Her father was a policeman. From an early age she was subject to strict discipline from her mother, a devout Roman Catholic who punished her for any misbehavior. When Boreman was 16, the family moved to Florida. In school, she was nicknamed "Miss Holy Holy" because she kept her dates at a safe distance. However, in her autobiography "Ordeal" (1980) and in the television show E! True Hollywood Story (2000), she revealed that she had given birth to an out-of-wedlock son when she was 20 years old in 1969, and that her mother put him up for adoption. Boreman mistakenly thought that the child was being put in foster care until she was ready to care for him and was heartbroken when she found out that she would never see him again. She moved to New York to start a new life in 1970. While there, she was involved in a devastating car accident that required a blood transfusion. She moved back to Florida to recover.

While in Florida, recovering at her parents' place, Boreman met Chuck Traynor, and became involved with him in 1969. The couple moved back to New York that same year, where Traynor became by turns her manager, pimp, and husband. (Boreman later wrote that Traynor had decided to get married so that spousal privilege would prevent her from being compelled to testify against him in court.) (read more . . . )