Ginger Lynn Allen bubbles with childlike exuberance and a zest for life, that is palpable and contagious. Her kinetic energy, in tandem with soft curves and a sultry coquettish sex appeal, turned the erotic film industry on its ear when she splashed onto the adult entertainment scene in 1983. A Rockford, Illinois native, Allen is candid about her dysfunctional family history, yet, she has not allowed adversity she suffered as a child to impede or impact her life in a negative way. Always one to make the best of circumstances and opportunities, Ginger welcomed the move to her grandparents’ home at the age of thirteen after bearing a difficult relationship with her mother. In 1982, Allen moved to Southern California to accept a job offer at Musicland and was joined by her boyfriend a short time afterwards. In order to supplement her income, Ginger answered an ad as a stripper for a Bachelor party. When she subsequently followed up on an advertisement for the World Modeling Agency in Van Nuys, Allen immediately recognized the potential for financial security and stardom.
As the excepts show, Ginger did not hold back when we spoke during the latter part of 2009 and early 2010, in a three-part interview:
“My parents met in Illinois – got pregnant and had me. My father is a recovering alcoholic. Now somehow, when I hear myself saying these words, it sounds like your stereotypical porn star upbringing or background, but I believe that any and every family has their colors, and mine just happens to have a few more colors than most people’s do.
After my parents married they began to have difficulties. My father was much too young and my mother was way too nuts. My sister was born five years after I was. I believe I was probably about eight or nine when my parents separated for the first time, and that continued off and on -- back together apart again - until I was eleven when they finally divorced. My mother, being raised by a southern Baptist minister and his wife, was taught to believe in hell and damnation, and God would punish you for everything you did. The Baptist minister had the philosophy that you spare the rod and spoil the child. I remember my mother telling me stories that she wore burlap sacks to school. They were very, very, poor. Being that she was punished in a physical way growing up, she continued the cycle. My mother was not only mentally ill but she had tendencies toward physical and verbal violence.”
“I learned to knit when I was five from my grandmother. I did a lot of sewing; I did a lot of art projects. My grandfather used to take me to a shooting range where we would line bottles and cans, whatever we could find, along what was left of the walls of the camp and just shoot. I grew up riding on the back of my grandfather’s police Harley, and then moved onto my father’s Harley. We go to Sturgis, South Dakota every year for the bike rally.“
“I always knew that I didn’t belong in Illinois. I wanted to leave and I always wanted to go to California. I had bigger hopes; I had bigger dreams. I wanted everything that there was to have in life. I wanted something really big and I didn’t know what that really big thing was. I always said that I would never get married until I was at least thirty. I wanted to have a career, and even though I didn’t know what that was I knew I wanted it.”
“1984/1985 is right after my parents found out I had started doing adult films. I was disowned. My grandfather was allegedly rolling over in his grave. My father took my grandmother down to watch my porn. It was brutal, it was very difficult. It took a couple of years for us to re-establish our relationship which became stronger, but it was a tough couple of years. The whole trauma, the drama, the tragedy of my family discovering what I did was brutal. I love my family, and they basically disowned me. I wrote a fourteen page letter to my father. He cried and I cried, and not long after that, I did my very first AVN show – my very first Consumers Electronics Show. One of my favorite photos is of me wearing my Sears dress in Rockford, Illinois, where I was selling donuts, and here I’m signing autographs wearing the same dress with my dad standing next to me.”
“The most difficult part about the choice that I’ve made in my career is relationships with men. Those who are completely and absolutely accepting are not the ones you really want to be with. I meet men who want a relationship but they’re swingers. When I’m in a relationship, I want to be monogamous. I want it to be one-on-one. So for the most part, the ones who are accepting of my career live a lifestyle that I don’t. My career and my life are two completely different things. I’m not a swinger and I’m not the sexually free woman that you would think that I am. I don’t live up to my reputation off camera - as far as my lifestyle. The civilians that I’ve dated - I’ve been engaged nine times – I just can’t go through with it. You know, they’ll ask me to change my name, ‘Dye your hair, pretend that you’re somebody else.’ It’s made relationships very difficult. I’ve had some long term relationships. I’ve had some fabulous ones, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get married. I don’t know if the kind of man who would be able to accept me without any hang-ups is the type of man that I would want to be with.”
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