Everyone might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and as Linda

Larry Marchiano Ex-husband

Boreman helped make Deep Throat the most successful blue movie of all time - but said she was never paid for it and became an anti-pornography campaigner later in life.

She said she was forced into performing some scenes at gunpoint by her former manager and husband, Chuck Traynor, and said that every time someone watched her on screen, "they are watching me being raped".

She had been in hospital since losing control of her car, which rolled twice.

Her ex-husband, Larry Marchiano, and their two adult children were at the hospital when she died.

"Everyone might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and as Linda," Mr Marchiano said.

She later campaigned against pornography

"We divorced five years ago, but she was still my best friend."

Deep Throat, made in 1972, was declared obscene by the state of New York, but still went on to become the first pornographic film to be seen widely at cinemas and made $600m (�414m) at box offices.

But she detailed the abusive relationship she had with Mr Traynor in her four autobiographies.

Campaigns

After their divorce in 1973, she joined campaigns against exploitation in the industry.

"She challenged pornographers in a way that no one ever has, before or since," according to her friend Catharine MacKinnon.

"She had this legacy of resistance to oppression - there is no-one able to do what she did, to have been treated as she was and come out of it to fight back."

In a 1997 interview, Boreman said: "I look in the mirror and I look the happiest I've ever looked in my entire life.

"I'm not ashamed of my past or sad about it. And what people might think of me, well, that's not real.

"I look in the mirror and I know that I've survived."