One by one, the honorees came forward to be recognized: the wounded veteran, the tech executive and the noted porn star.
It was the 10-year reunion for Scotlandville Magnet High School’s Class of 1997 in Baton Rouge, La., and a few alumni were being singled out for professional distinction. Stephanie Clifford needed no reintroduction. “Everybody already knew,” she said of her career in an interview. She worked the room of suits and gowns with a smile.
By now, the public knows both too much about Ms. Clifford, who goes by Stormy Daniels, and almost nothing at all.
She is the actress in pornographic films who is suing a sitting president, with whom she said she had a consensual affair, in order to be released from a nondisclosure agreement she reached with his lawyer just before the 2016 election. Over the past two months, she has guided the story of her alleged relationship with President Trump — and the $130,000 she was paid to keep silent — into a full-fledged scandal. If Ms. Clifford’s court case proceeds, Mr. Trump may have to testify in depositions, and her suit could provide evidence of campaign spending violations. She is scheduled to appear on “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
And if her name has seemed ubiquitous — repeated on cable television and in the White House briefing room, and plastered on signs outside nightclubs, where her appearance fees have multiplied — there is this to consider: Unlike most perceived presidential adversaries, about whom Mr. Trump is rarely shy, Ms. Clifford has not been the subject of a single tweet.
To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. It is she, some in Washington now joke, and not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who could topple Mr. Trump.
Those who know her well have registered the moment differently. Ms. Clifford has subsisted amid the seamier elements of a business often rife with exploitation and unruly fare; more than a few of her film titles are unprintable. But for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon. With an instinct for self-promotion, she evolved from “kindergarten circuit” stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s. Why would a piece of paper and an executive legal team set her back?
“She’s the boss, and everyone knew it,” Nina Hartley, one of the longest-working performers in the industry, said about Ms. Clifford.
“The Renaissance porn star,” said Ron Jeremy, once perhaps the most famous porn star of all.
“She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career,” said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the R-rated comedies “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” “She is not someone to be underestimated.”
In her own scripts, she has gravitated at times toward more ambitious productions, with elaborate plotlines and nods to politics.
Her standards on set can be exacting. Ms. Clifford does not mind firing people, colleagues said, banishing those who flub a scene or gild a résumé. She has demanded that an actor change his “dumb” stage name because it would look silly on her promotional materials. And she has coaxed singular performances from her charges, once guiding Mr. Jeremy through a scene in which he sang to her small dog.
Her competitive streak is not well concealed. After industry award nominations were announced one year, Ms. Clifford, who had amassed more than a dozen such honors, reminded an interviewer that she had been snubbed in the categories of cinematography and editing.
When opportunities have presented themselves outside her domain — a Maroon 5 music video, a public flirtation with a Senate run in Louisiana, an appearance at a celebrity golf tournament that included a future president — Ms. Clifford has made the most of the publicity, helping her carve out a comfortable life in the Dallas suburbs.
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