SHE was the sexy blonde whose image was plastered on the bedroom walls of teenage boys around the world – but Pamela Anderson says behind that vision she was depressed for 20 years.
The model-turned-actress has revealed that her life was a “big blur” from 1997, when she left Baywatch, until 2022, when she appeared in a Broadway revival of the hit musical Chicago.
Pamela Anderson says that behind that dream image she was depressed for 20 years[/caption]
During that time, the 57-year-old mother of two didn’t want to hear her name and felt like a “failure.”
Now that’s all changed, thanks to her eschewing the Hollywood lifestyle, ditching makeup and ditching the blonde bombshell look that made her famous.
She told Glamor magazine: “It’s so liberating.
“It’s so crazy trying to meet the crazy expectation of what people want you to look like.”
And this year could be the biggest turning point in Pamela’s late career.
Earlier this month, she received an “outstanding performance” award at the Zurich Film Festival for her role in the critically acclaimed new film The Last Showgirl.
She told Variety magazine, “I never thought I would stand on stage and receive such an award.”
Described by the festival’s artistic director as ‘the performance of the year’, her role as fading showgirl gives Pamela a shot at an Oscar.
Next year, the actress – who attended the Glamor Women of the Year awards in New York on Wednesday – will star in a remake of the tongue-in-cheek Naked Gun comedy with Liam Neeson and is currently making an arthouse film with the title Rosebush Pruning with Jamie. Bell and Elle Fanning.
In addition, Pamela has launched a cookbook and a new range of skin care products.
She said: “I just want to keep working. I’m excited to do more. Watching it now, I feel like I went from Baywatch to Broadway.
“I don’t know what happened in between; it’s all a big blur.
“I’m just happy to be here right now because I think I’ve had depression for a few decades.”
In the 1990s, Pamela was one of the world’s most sought-after stars.
She appeared on the cover of Playboy before playing lifeguard CJ Parker in the hit US TV show Baywatch and nabbing the title role in superhero film Barb Wire.
But the leak of a sex tape featuring Pamela and her first husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, seriously damaged the image she tried to build as a serious actress.
Matters got worse when Barb Wire was critically panned in 1996.
Turmoil in her private life, including a divorce from Lee in 1998 after he pleaded guilty to assaulting her, overshadowed any hopes of rekindling her acting dreams.
Over the next few decades, Pamela’s career consisted largely of appearances on reality shows such as Dancing On Ice and Big Brother in the United Kingdom or roles in smaller films.
She also became a committed animal rights activist and regularly spoke on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Pamela turned her back on the blonde bombshell look that made her famous[/caption]
Pamela had a tumultuous marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee[/caption]
The public realized how troubled Pamela’s life had been when she revealed in 2014 that she had been abused by a female babysitter, raped at age 12 by a 25-year-old man, and raped at age 14 by her then-boyfriend and his friends. .
She has also had health problems, contracting hepatitis after sharing a tattoo needle with Tommy Lee – and in 2010 it was revealed she owed almost £400,000 to the tax authorities.
Understandably, she has had “dark days,” and credits her sons Brandon, 28, and Dylan Jagger, 26, for keeping her from the brink.
Pamela said: “What saved my life – and you never want to do this to your children – was my boys.
“Because without my boys I couldn’t have been as strong as I am.”
The Disney+ biographical drama Pam & Tommy, in which Lily James plays Pamela, also changed the public’s perception of her.
It showed the American beauty as a strong woman whose complaints about the sex tape leak were cruelly dismissed by sexist men.
But the actress, who has never seen the series, railed against it in a recent interview with Glamor magazine, saying: “It really felt like another kick in the stomach that people might find that entertaining.
“I think I lost my husband, my sanity and my career.”
‘I felt like a failure’
The hit 2022 show was a catalyst for her role as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago in New York that same year.
Producers wanted to prove there was another side to the former model, who famously enhanced her breasts with plastic surgery.
This was followed last year by the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story and the best-selling autobiography Love, Pamela.
The comeback is now in full swing following the first screenings of The Last Showgirl, with the Hollywood Reporter describing Pamela’s performance as ‘transformative’ and Entertainment Weekly predicting an Oscar ‘could happen’.
She plays a sequined stage performer looking for new work after her long-running show is abruptly canceled.
The film, which also stars Jamie Lee Curtis, is directed by Gia Coppola, the granddaughter of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola.
The acclaim has clearly given her a boost.
In an interview with Glamor May, Pamela said: “I’m definitely much happier now.
“Ten years ago I felt like a failure. I think it was probably the last twenty years.
Pamela is generating Oscar buzz for the new film The Last Showgirl[/caption]
Pamela said: ‘I prepared myself for this role in my life’[/caption]
And her own hardships, including five marriages that never lasted more than three years, seeped into the character.
She said: “I have been preparing for this role in my life.
“I don’t think I could have played this character in The Last Showgirl if I didn’t have the life I had, so it was worth it.”
Last month, she completed filming Naked Gun in Atlanta, Georgia, a remake of the 1982 hit.
Irishman Neeson takes over the late Leslie Nielsen’s role as the deadpan cop Frank Drebin.
Pamela commented: “Liam is hysterical about it.”
Rosebush Pruning will undoubtedly be an even more surprising twist, as director Karim Ainouz takes a more arthouse approach to filmmaking.
The upswing in Pamela’s career has coincided with her eschewing the expectations placed on stars.
When her longtime makeup artist and boyfriend Alexis Vogel died of breast cancer in 2019, the actress stopped applying so much makeup.
She removed her makeup for much of The Last Showgirl and insisted on doing away with the usual team of stylists for her recent Glamor cover shoot.
‘MY LIPS ARE WEIRD’
She said: “I prefer it raw. One eye is smaller than the other, my nose is crooked, my lips are strange.”
In another change, she returned to her native Canada in 2019 to live with her parents on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Three years ago Pamela sold her £9million modernist pad in Malibu, California.
The vegan has now released a cookbook inspired by the vegetables she grows in her rural retreat.
Despite all that, she is still trying to shake off the image of herself as a glamorous model.
She said: “When I hear my name I don’t like it. I have a negative connotation.
“I almost have a stereotype of myself. It has been hard work to get rid of that.”
If she lands an Oscar nomination, it will certainly be a notable response to all the critics who haven’t gotten past her Playboy past.
And to be honest, the praise the actress received for The Last Showgirl surprised even her.
She concluded: “I underestimated myself too.
“And it came at just the right time. Everything came at just the right time.”
Pamela has now released a cookbook inspired by the vegetables she grows in her rural retreat[/caption]
