Mink Stole

Part of the original motley crew of cast players in underground shock-master John Waters' bare-bones 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm cult perversions during the late 1960s and early '70s, Mink Stole would remain a thoroughly offbeat, outrageous presence in counterculture films for five decades.

She was born with the All-American name of Nancy Stoll in Baltimore, Maryland on August 25, 1947. Waters took her under his wing in 1966 and she started "acting out" a number of his deviant creations for gross-out effect alongside other outré members including transvestite actor Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary, Cookie Mueller, and the must-be-seen-to-be-believed Edith Massey. They called themselves the Dreamland Players.

Stole came to be known as both the hysterical foil and the vengeful nemesis of "leading lady" Divine; she played her annoying characters as pure evil incarnate. Her role in the infamous Pink Flamingos (1972) as Connie Marble, the carrot-domed villain complete with outlandish cats-eye glasses and seedy fur coat, set the tone for her subsequent gallery of grotesques, including tantrum-throwing girl-child Taffy Davenport in Female Trouble (1974), murderous housewife-on-the-lam Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living (1977), and corn-rowed hussy Sandra Sullivan in Polyester (1981), which was the first Waters film to star a legit actor: Tab Hunter.

Mink's movie time in Waters' campfests would decrease and decrease as his movies/parodies grew more and more mainstream, but she remained an altruistic player for Waters, appearing in nearly all of his films. From 1994 on, she did bits in his wide-releases of Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), Cecil B. Demented (2000), A Dirty Shame (2004), Stuck! (2009), and Hush Up Sweet Charlotte (2015).

Moving ahead, Mink Stole appeared in numerous tongue-in-cheek cameos for other off-the-cuff directing talents as well, continuing her reign as a prime film outlaw. She appeared in Another Gay Movie (2006) as a character named Sloppi Seconds. Need we say more? Other films with tacky, tawdry titles that begged for straight-to-video release include Liquid Dreams (1991), The Crazysitter (1994), A Dirty Shame (2004), Sunny & Share Love You (2007), and Becoming Blond (2012). She also made appearances in the raunchy "Eating Out" series of comedy films: Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds (2006), Eating Out: All You Can Eat (2009), Eating Out: Drama Camp (2011), and Eating Out: The Open Weekend (2011).

Over the years, Mink has made the rounds on the experimental stage. She played Van Helsing in a production of "Dracula" and the title papal role in "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You", not to mention bizarre contemporary treatments of the Bard's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "A Winter's Tale". She recently attracted attention in the play "Sleeping With Straight Men", which was seen on both coasts from 2002 to 2004.

On the sly she has written an advice column, of all things, called "Think Mink" for a Baltimore newspaper.