I’ve shaken off the Baywatch ‘curse’ with my new film and proved I’m not just a cartoon character, says Pamela Anderson
IT was the show that made her famous – but Pamela Anderson is thrilled at the prospect of finally losing the “cartoon character” image Baywatch gave her.
Now the 57-year-old is hoping she will instead be known for being an Oscar winner, after she was tipped to land a first Academy nomination for her role in The Last Showgirl.
Today, a proud Pamela reveals what it would mean to turn her back on her blonde bombshell persona, 33 years after she burst on to our TV screens in her tiny red swimsuit as lifeguard CJ Parker.
She says: “Being part of pop culture is a blessing and it’s a little bit of a curse if you want to convince people you can do other things.
“I think I just started really walking my talk. I didn’t want to be that cartoon character I’d been walking around like.
“I thought, ‘How do people look at me any differently? I mean, this is what I’m presenting to the world’.”
Pamela has already received a Golden Globes Best Actress nomination for her role as a Las Vegas showgirl, and on Friday it is predicted an Oscar nod will be announced too.
The film, directed by Gia Coppola, premiered in Toronto and the cast watched it together for the first time.
Being part of pop culture is a blessing and a bit of
Pamela
a curse if you want to convince people you can do other things. My life is: What do I have to lose?
Pam says: “Gia was insistent that we were all going to see it together, and we’re going to see it on the big screen with an audience.
“And so all of us were in tears. She traumatised us.”
In the film, Pamela plays the lead role of Shelly, and she was so desperate to prove herself as a serious actress that she knew she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving the part her all.
She says: “My whole life has been like that — ‘What do I have to lose?’
New chapter
“I am pretty fearless with that. I knew I was capable of more and I kind of was beating myself up when I went home — like, ‘I really screwed up’ or ‘I didn’t work hard enough’ or just events that had happened in my life.
“And then when this came along, I thought, ‘This is what that feeling is when an actor or an artist sees a project that they have to do’.
“It’s life or death — it was so important. And I remember calling Gia and I was selling myself to her and she’s like, ‘No. I want you to do it. That’s why I sent you the script’.
“And I’m like, ‘No, but I can do this. You know I can do it’.
“And she goes, ‘No, I know you can do it — relax!’ ”
Pamela adds: “When I read the script, I thought, ‘Put your head down. You’re going to work really hard. This might be the only movie you’re ever going to do and how do you want your legacy to be?’
“I wanted to work on my voice, I wanted to work on everything. So I just did the best I could, and I’m glad it’s been well received.”
Canadian-American star Pamela’s career spans three decades and includes the 1996 film Barb Wire and a stint on Broadway in 2022 playing Roxie Hart in the revival of Chicago.
But she says: “I feel like this is the first time that I’ve ever really done anything at this level of commitment and focus for myself.
“It was a whole new world, a new chapter.
“But coming from the Broadway stage and going right into this film was really exciting.
“I felt like I already had my feet wet, I wasn’t coming from Baywatch doing this.”
Pamela became an overnight modelling success in 1989 after a TV camera team picked her out in the crowd at a big US football game.
She was offered a photo shoot, and went on to become an international sex symbol, appearing on the cover of Playboy 13 times.
After minor acting roles her breakthrough came in 1992 when she was cast as CJ Parker in Baywatch.
Other parts followed, but she was often typecast as a blonde bimbo, and a tumultuous and much-publicised marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee did little to change that image.
Just 96 hours after meeting in 1995, the pair married on a Mexican beach.
The marriage produced sons Brandon and Dylan, but it was a rocky one.
They endured the humiliation of a stolen sex tape and in 1998 Tommy served six months in prison after assaulting her.
Pamela went on to have four more failed marriages — to musician Kid Rock in 2006, then to poker player Rick Salomon — who she married twice, in 2007 and 2014 — and to her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst in 2020, which ended in divorce in 2022.
But in 2023 people started to see another side to her, thanks to her Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, and memoir Love, Pamela.
Physically she changed, too.
After the death from breast cancer of her friend, make-up artist Alexis Vogel, she decided to appear bare- faced on the red carpet.
Pamela, who has a net worth of £16million, says: “I was at Paris Fashion Week and just didn’t want to sit in a make-up chair for three hours. Then I started realising, ‘This is really great, I have so much freedom’. It has been such a freeing experience not to have to keep up with the Joneses.”
Pamela, who now lives in a motel her grandmother once owned on Vancouver Island in Canada, adds: “I mean, I love make-up and glamour and everything, I’m not against it.
‘Believe in yourself’
“I just think we have to check in with ourselves; have some make-up-free dinner parties sometimes.”
Pamela is so comfortable in her new naked skin that transforming into a Las Vegas showgirl for the movie terrified her.
She says: “When I got ready for the film, I wouldn’t look in the mirror.
“I didn’t want to get distracted about the way that I looked. And so when I saw the character, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s crazy!’ I’ve never liked to see myself in anything and I was really scared to even see the film.”
She adds that her part in Chicago helped to prepare her perfectly for The Last Showgirl.
She says: “It taught me a lot just about the culture backstage — these people that have been doing these roles for 20 years, talking about what they’re going to make for dinner and what their kids are doing backstage.
“So it was interesting to have that experience before doing this film.”
Working with Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a showgirl-turned-waitress, was a highlight for Pamela — though their first meeting was surreal.
She recalls: “The first time I met Jamie, we did a table read and she had just got a spray tan and was getting darker and oranger before my eyes. It was just getting more and more intense.”
Pamela is a vegan and an animal rights activist, with a strict daily routine.
She says: “I get up at four or five in the morning and write for an hour in my journal to start the day. It is a stream of consciousness.”
As she chats, it is clear Pamela has reached a point in her life when she is happy, proud and content with exactly where she is.
And despite her fears that The Last Showgirl could have been her final film, she is now working alongside Liam Neeson on a reboot of the hit Naked Gun movie comedies.
Pamela says: “You have to believe in yourself before others do. You have to respect yourself so others can.
“I look at all my life experience now and everything that’s happened.
“And to be able to do something like this and be able to use all that life experience, then I’m like, ‘OK. That was worth it. It was worth it’.”