The hooker with a heart of gold (also the whore with a heart of gold or the tart with a heart) is a stock character in which a fallen woman, a prostitute who sells sex for cash or drugs, is in fact a kindly and internally wholesome person. This character is often a pivotal, but peripheral, character in literature and motion pictures, usually giving key advice or serving as a go-between. She is sometimes established in contrast to another female character who is morally perfect but frigid or otherwise unyielding. The stereotype owes a debt to Mary Magdalene.

A variation on the theme, the stripper with a heart of gold, is a tamer version of the character, a stripper and sex worker but not a prostitute.

Examples

• Donna Beck on All My Children
• Calpurnia in I, Claudius
• Gloria (Doris Dowling ) in "The Lost Weekend"
• Iris Steensma (Jodie Foster) in Taxi Driver
• Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) in Risky Business
• Linda Ash (Mira Sorvino) in Mighty Aphrodite
• Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Trading Places
• Poppy (Sissy Spacek) in Prime Cut
• Rose in the song "Bed of Roses" by the Statler Brothers
• Sera (Elisabeth Shue) in Leaving Las Vegas
• Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) in "Firefly"
• Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) in Pretty Woman, that also shares traits of Cinderella and the Pygmalion myth.
• Never on Sunday shows a somewhat different character

See also

• List of famous prostitutes and courtesans