She was born as Barbara Trageny to an unwed eighteen-year-old Dorothy Trageny in 1932. A few years later, they both changed their last names to Boreman when Dorothy married John Boreman. Dorothy was played by
Sharon Stone in
Lovelace (2013), and there is a scene in the film where she talks to her youngest daughter
Linda Lovelace, played by
Amanda Seyfried, about how tough it was raising Barbara as an unwed teenager.