Porn star Stormy Daniels: Five things you may not know about Donald Trump's alleged lover

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Porn star Stormy Daniels has released a sketch of the man she said threatened her shortly after she sought to sell a tabloid magazine her story alleging a brief affair with US President Donald Trump.

During an appearance on American TV show The View, Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, made public a sketch of the man.

Daniels said the alleged threat took place in 2011, shortly after she had agreed in May of that year to sell her story about the Trump affair to a magazine for $15,000.

Trump, who denies the affair, dismissed the picture on Twitter calling it: "a sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!"

 

Porn star Stormy Daniels: the latest in 200 years of US presidential sex scandals

The tweet “marks the first time Trump has commented about the matter on Twitter, though he didn't explicitly refer to Daniels”, says CNN. 

On The View Daniels said she did not tell her husband about the threat and that she had not told him about the encounter with Trump. “I didn’t want him to think I was a bad mum or that I put our daughter in danger,” she said.

Here are five things you may not know about Stormy Daniels:

She is an award-winning performer

Daniels has won almost 30 awards for her work in the adult film industry, including three Fans of Adult Media and Entertainment (Fame) Favourite Breasts awards. The AVN Awards, dubbed the Oscars of porn, named her Best New Starlet in 2004, and she has picked up three more AVNs since, including Best Supporting Actress for her role in porn horror comedy Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre. She has also won seven gongs for directing, and been inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame, which honours people who have made “significant contributions to the adult industry”.

She considered running for Senate

Daniels formed an exploratory committee ahead of the 2010 Senate race, and considered running against a Christian Right conservative who had been caught up in a prostitution scandal. The porn star declared herself a Republican candidate, inspired by news that the Republican National Committee (RNC) paid expenses for fundraisers at a “lesbian bondage themed nightclub”  in Los Angeles. She later decided not to run, however, citing lack of funds and the media’s failure to take her seriously.

She loves horses

Daniels owns several horses and has won blue ribbons at equestrian events, which she attends with her her husband, fellow porn actor Brendon Miller (real name Glendon Crain), and their seven-year-old daughter. “Her preparations can be meticulous, matching her saddle pad with a horse’s bonnet colours,” reports The New York Times. Dominic Schramm, a horse trainer and rider who works with Daniels, told the newspaper: “She takes it very personally that she does well. She can be quite hard on herself.”

She wanted to be a vet or a journalist

“Classmates remember her as a serious, unobtrusive student,” says The New York Times. She had offers from colleges, and the test scores to get in, and at one point wanted to be a journalist or veterinarian. However, at the age of 17 Daniels was persuaded to perform in a strip club and says she “made enough money on two songs to make more than I did all week answering phones at the riding stable that I worked at”. She went on to work as a stripper at The Gold Club in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was later invited to perform in adult films.

She appears in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up

Daniels has credited cameos in two Judd Apatow films. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin(2005), she stars in a fictional movie (Space Nuts: Episode 69 - Unholy Union) watched by Steve Carell’s character, while in Knocked Up (2007), she plays a lap dancer. Asked about Daniels during a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Apatow said: “I just remember that she was very smart and really strong and funny, to the point where we kept asking her to do silly things in our movies.”

UK viewers can watch clips of today’s live interview on The View’s YouTube channel.