Adult-film actress Abigail Clayton was born Gail Lawrence in Huntington, Long Island, NY. After graduating from Stony Brook University with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Gail migrated to the West Coast, settling in San Francisco. She began working as a film editor and soon was performing in adult film loops with the likes of Annette Haven and Leslie Bovée.

A youthful-looking brunette with perky B-cup breasts, prominent nipples, doe-like eyes, and a slight overbite, Abigail was one of the most appealing and memorable stars of the Golden Age of Porn. Her lusty contributions to such classic pictures as Naked Afternoon (1976), Desires Within Young Girls (1977), 7 Into Snowy (1978) and SexWorld (1978) were always arousing. One of Gail's early adult films was Dixie (1976). In this film she plays a promiscuous, underage, teenage prostitute. Dixie was a film Gail regretted making as it was "told with a leering perspective" and also the one and only time she worked with people she didn't know.

Gail Lawrence also appeared in a few "mainstream" movies. She starred alongside Gérard Depardieu in Rêve de singe (1978), was especially memorable as a hapless model who is brutally murdered by vicious psychotic Joe Spinell in the horror slasher cult favorite Maniac (1980) and had a small part as a nun in the comedy Les fesses à l'air (1981). Abigail quit appearing in hardcore films in 1980. She was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2008.