Stormy Daniels American Model Born 1979 in Baton Rouge

Early life

Stormy Daniels, born Stephanie Gregory on 17 March 1979 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is an American adult film performer, director and model. Her parents separated while she was very small, and her mother raised her. She has described a modest, low-income upbringing. She finished at Scotlandville Magnet High School in Baton Rouge in 1997, at a time when she was thinking about a career in journalism, and during her school years she worked answering telephones at a riding stable.

Career

Daniels began dancing at clubs in Baton Rouge as a teenager and became a featured act with a touring agency in September 2000. Her stage name was a nod to the rock band Mötley Crüe. By her own account, her work in adult film began in 2002. In 2004 she won the AVN Best New Starlet Award, and she has directed for the studio Wicked since that year. Her directing and writing credits include Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre (2005), Operation: Desert Stormy (2007), Partly Stormy (2010), Lust on the Prairie (2011), Wanted (2015) and Unbridled (2017). Her husband at the time, Brendon Miller, edited about half of her films.

She also took small parts in mainstream productions. Her scenes in the comedies The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Knocked Up (2007) are among her best-documented screen appearances. In 2007 she played a stripper in the FX series Dirt and appeared as a pole dancer in a Maroon 5 music video, and in 2009 she was a guest on an episode of Party Down. A listing of her screen work shows 22 credits between 2003 and 2017.

In 2014 she entered both the AVN Hall of Fame and the XRCO Hall of Fame. The city of West Hollywood gave her a key to the city on 23 May 2018, declared as Stormy Daniels Day. She was named host of the 2019 XBIZ Awards.

Public roles

In 2009, supporters who had set up a website to draft her formed an exploratory committee for a possible run for the United States Senate in Louisiana against the incumbent Republican David Vitter. On 6 April 2010 she declared as a Republican candidate, saying that she considered the party closest to her libertarian outlook. On 15 April 2010 she withdrew, citing the cost of a campaign and a lack of serious media attention.

Her name became widely known in 2018 in connection with a payment of $130,000 made in October 2016 by Michael Cohen, then the personal attorney of Donald Trump, in return for her silence about an alleged relationship with Trump in 2006. Trump's representatives denied the relationship. After the payment was reported by the Wall Street Journal in January 2018, Daniels filed a lawsuit in March of that year arguing that the non-disclosure agreement was invalid because Trump had not signed it. She spoke about the matter in an interview with 60 Minutes later that month.

Daniels brought a defamation suit against Trump in April 2018. A court dismissed it in October 2018 on First Amendment grounds, and her appeal failed in 2020. She was later ordered to pay legal fees to Trump's lawyers, including further sums after unsuccessful appeals. In August 2018 Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges and said that he had made the payment at the direction of the candidate. In September 2018 Trump's lawyers said he would not enforce the agreement. In the spring of 2024 a trial in New York City examined 34 charges of falsifying business records against Trump in connection with the payment. Daniels testified on 7 May 2024, and Trump was convicted on 30 May 2024.

On 12 July 2018 Daniels was arrested after a performance at a club in Columbus, Ohio, on accusations under the state's strip club law. The Columbus police chief said the next day that a mistake had been made, and the charges were dropped within hours. In 2019 an internal police review found the arrest was improper but not premeditated or political, and five officers faced departmental discipline. Daniels sued the city in federal court, and the case was settled in September 2019 with a payment of $450,000 to her.

Personal life

Daniels lives in Forney, Texas. She has been a lifelong horse enthusiast, owns several horses and has won ribbons at equestrian events. Her book Full Disclosure, a memoir, was published in 2018 by St. Martin's Press. Records list marriages to Pat Myne (2003 to 2005), Brendon Miller (2015 to 2022) and, from 2022, the performer Barrett Blade. She has one daughter.