SHE was the sexy blonde whose image was pinned on teenage boys’ bedroom walls all over the world – but Pamela Anderson says that behind that dream image, she was depressed for two decades.
The model-turned-actress has revealed that her life was a “big blur” from 1997 when she left Baywatch to 2022 when she appeared in a Broadway revival of hit musical Chicago.
During that time, the 57-year-old mum-of-two did not want to hear her name and felt like a “failure.”
Now that has all changed, thanks to her shunning the Hollywood life- style, ditching make-up and turning her back on the blonde bombshell look that made her famous.
She told Glamour magazine: “It’s so freeing.
"It’s so crazy trying to live up to this crazy expectation of what people want you to look like.”
And this year could be the biggest turning point of Pamela’s late career.
Earlier this month she picked up an “outstanding performance” award at the Zurich Film Festival for her role in much-lauded new movie The Last Showgirl.
She told Variety magazine: “I never thought I would be on stage, receiving an award like that.”
Described as “the performance of the year” by the festival’s artistic director, her part as a fading showgirl puts Pamela in with a shot of an Oscar.
Next year the actress — who attended the Glamour 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 titled Rosebush Pruning with Jamie Bell and Elle Fanning.
On top of that, Pamela has launched a cookbook and a new range of skincare.
She said: “I just want to keep working. I am excited to do more. I look at it now and it feels like I went from Baywatch to Broadway.
"I don’t know what happened in between — it’s all a big blur.
“I am just happy to be here, in this moment, because I think I have had depression for a couple of 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 hit US TV show Baywatch and bagged the title role in superhero flick Barb Wire.
But the leak of a sex tape featuring Pamela and her first husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, badly damaged the image she was trying 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 reigniting her acting dreams.
For the next couple of decades, Pamela’s career largely consisted of appearances on reality shows such as Dancing On Ice and Big Brother in the UK or roles in minor films.
She also became a committed animal rights activist, regularly speaking on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The public realised how troubled Pamela’s life had been when, in 2014, she revealed she had been molested by a female babysitter, raped by a 25-year-old man at 12 and gang-raped aged 14 by her then-boyfriend and his friends.
She has also had health issues, contracting hepatitis after sharing a tattoo needle with Tommy Lee — and in 2010 it was revealed she owed nearly £400,000 to the taxman.
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 put this on your kids — were my boys.
“Because without my boys, I wouldn’t have been able to be as strong as I was.”
The Disney+ biographical drama Pam & Tommy, with Lily James playing Pamela, also changed the public’s perception of her.
It showed the US beauty as a strong woman whose complaints about the leak of the sex tape were cruelly dismissed by sexist men.
But the actress, who has never watched the series, raged against it in a recent interview with Glamour 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, 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.
That was followed last year by the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story and best-selling autobiography Love, Pamela.
The comeback is in full flow now following the first screenings of The Last Showgirl, with the Hollywood Reporter describing Pamela’s acting as “transformative” and Entertainment Weekly predicting an Oscar “just might happen.”
She plays a sequined stage performer in search for new work after her long-running show is abruptly cancelled.
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 put a spring in her step.
In an interview with Glamour mag, Pamela said: “I’m definitely much happier now.
"Ten years ago, I felt like a failure. I think it was probably the last 20 years.”
And her own hardships, which include five marriages that never lasted for more than three years, bled into the character.
She said: “I’ve been getting ready for this role in my life.
“I don’t think I could have played this character in The Last Showgirl if I wouldn’t have the life that I had, so it was worth it.”
Last month she finished filming Naked Gun in Atlanta, Georgia, which is a remake of the 1982 hit.
Irishman Neeson takes over from the late Leslie Nielsen as the deadpan cop Frank Drebin.
Pamela commented: “Liam is hysterical in it.”
Rosebush Pruning is sure to be an even more surprising turn, because director Karim Ainouz has a more arthouse approach to film-making.
The upturn in Pamela’s career has coincided with her shunning the expectations placed on stars.
When her long-time make-up artist and friend Alexis Vogel died from breast cancer in 2019, the actress stopped putting on as much face paint.
She peeled back her make-up for much of The Last Showgirl and insisted on doing away with the usual team of stylists for her recent Glamour cover shoot.
'MY LIPS ARE WEIRD'
She said: “I’d rather be raw. One eye is smaller than the other, my nose is crooked, my lips are weird.”
Marking another change, in 2019 she returned to her native Canada 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 have a stereotype of myself almost. It’s been hard work to try to get rid of that.”
If she does land an Oscar nomination, it will certainly be a remarkable retort to all the critics who have not been able to get beyond her Playboy past.
And to be fair, the plaudits showered on the actress for The Last Showgirl surprised even her.
She concluded: “I underestimated myself too.
"And it just came at the right time. Everything just came at the right time.”
