Nina Hartley

Hartley grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, after graduating from Berkeley High School in 1977, she attended San Francisco State University's undergraduate nursing school and graduated magna cum laude in 1985, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She was a registered nurse until her license expired in 1986. Hartley sought a career in pornography as a way to make a living by having sex, later telling Las Vegas Weekly, "Porn gave me easy access to women without having to date them or have a relationship." She writes that part of her reason for choosing sex work was to be able to indulge her exhibitionistic and voyeuristic streak. She has said she chose her life's work when she saw the 1976 erotic film The Autobiography of a Flea alone at a theater in San Francisco. In 1982, during her sophomore year of nursing school, she started working as a stripper at the Sutter Cinema and then the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre.