Respectable: The Mary Millington Story (2016)
Big-screen documentary about the troubled career and tragic end of the 1970s UK adult film actress. Born in 1945, she endured regular bullying at school due to her illegitimacy, leaving at 15 with no qualifications. At 18 she entered into a sham marriage, and soon after that began nursing her terminally ill mother (ultimately for ten years). Not tall enough to fulfill her dream of being a fashion model, she began a career in porn to help pay for her mother's care.
In the mid 1970s she managed to move from short films to mainstream British sex comedies such as Intimate Games, Come Play with Me, and The Playbirds, appearing with the likes of Ian Hendry, Irene Handl, Valentine Dyall, Alan Lake, and Derren Nesbitt. Her name was a big draw (I remember her in her heyday), but by the late 70s she was being passed over for younger performers. Supplementing her income by work as a call girl and serving in sex shops (including one of her own) brought regular contact with the police, with raids and arrests. It also attracted the Inland Revenue. Her long-standing moderate drugs use became heavier, and in 1979 she received a tax bill she was unable to pay. That same year there were two arrests for shoplifting. The day after the second of these she took her own life by overdose, aged 33. Her last screen role was in punk band the Sex Pistols' The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (released posthumously).
A tragic story of someone who was clearly struggling for much of her life, despite her bubbly persona, and a reminder that we often don't know what's just below the surface.