The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitutes are assumed to perform for their clients. Employing historical biographies as well as interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book compares actresses and prostitutes from Nell Gwynne to Mae West. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, Kirsten Pullen offers many new insights to theater historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.