Pamela Anderson: failed partners, abuses and excesses of the greatest sensual icon of the 90s
The actress, who turns 56 today and represented the prototype of eroticism of an era, turned to the defense of animals and became a writer.
She was running towards the sea and, even in slow motion, you could see the fast and furious gestures of her long hair, her shapely legs, her sculpted body that summed up at first glance the symbol of beauty of the 90s. Pamela Anderson became one of the most desired women on the planet, perhaps because of the unconsciousness with which she handled herself since the beginning of her career, a career that started almost by chance.
However, few know that while she was becoming a global sex symbol, Anderson read philosophy and psychology books, wrote poems, painted and became an activist in defense of animal rights, refugees and the environment.
Pamela Anderson at 56 years old (Netflix).
But let’s take it one step at a time. Pam was born in Ladysmith, Canada, on July 1, 1967. She spent her early years in the family home with her mother Carol, who worked as a maid, her father Barry, who was a furnace repairman, and her younger brother Gerry.
From an early age she wanted to be independent and she achieved it before finishing high school, when she went to live with her first boyfriend and schoolmate, Tyrone. She didn’t quite know if it was love she felt for that boy or the desire to leave home and get away forever from her father’s addiction to alcohol. As soon as she finished her studies, she moved to Vancouver to work as a gym instructor and that precipitated the end of her teenage love.
However, fate had a surprise in store for her that would change her life forever. Around that time, in the mid-1980s, Pamela had gone to watch a Canadian Football League game. At one point during the event, the cameras focused on her face and her deep blue eyes were captured on the stadium’s giant screens. The young woman, who was wearing a Labatt beer t-shirt, received a standing ovation from the crowd and was asked by the organizers to come down to the field. That was how Pamela, almost unintentionally, became the brand’s exclusive model.
That day her vocation was born. She crossed the border and traveled to Los Angeles to venture into the world of modeling, and immediately she was called to do a nude for Playboy magazine. She didn’t hesitate. It was 1989, Pam was 22 years old and had become a bunny in Hugh Hefner’s empire.
Between supporting roles on television, came 1991 when she was asked to be one of the protagonists of the series Baywatch. Without much dialogue, the episodes featured young girls in bathing suits next to stylish boys who came and went to save people on the verge of drowning. Pamela stood out immediately. With her red one-piece suit, she played the unforgettable lifeguard C. J. Parker until 1997, and those 6 years were enough to make her a celebrity in the eyes of men and women around the world.
It turns out that at that time Baywatch – or Baywatchers, as it is translated into English – was the most watched show in the world. Around 148 countries, 1.1 billion people watched it episode after episode. It didn’t take many episodes for the producers to recognize that Pam was one of the actresses who most captivated audiences of all ages, men and women alike.
But behind that fairy tale, Pamela’s life had been anything but easy, as she revealed many years later. From the age of 6 to 10 she was abused by her nanny, and she was only able to tell about it in 2014. She also confessed that at the age of 12 she was a victim of rape by the older brother of a friend who was 25. “That was my first heterosexual relationship”, she wrote some time later.
Perhaps that path of difficult situations for a girl made it impossible for her to maintain a stable partner. She admits that the love of her life was Tommy Lee, the singer of Mötley Crue and father of her only two sons, Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee.
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, the love of her life (S. Granitz/WireImage)
She met the musician on the last day of 1994 at a New Year’s Eve party. Without knowing it, the beginning of ’95 would mark a before and after in his life. Lee was dazzled by her and so much so that he followed her to Cancun, Mexico, where the star had work activities. The artist suddenly appeared to her, without telling her anything. Pamela fell in love immediately, that same day, February 19, 1995.
Three days later they were going to the Civil Registry to seal their love before the law. Instead of wedding rings, they tattooed their wedding bands on their index fingers and spent their honeymoon having unbridled sex. It was during those days that they recorded themselves having sex and that video was later stolen by a former worker from their home who sold it and immediately the tape began to circulate on that new XXX called Internet. It was impossible to prevent it. When it happened, Pamela was in the seventh month of her second pregnancy and was destroyed. She did not even want to testify when the time came for her to do so at the trial. “I’m not going to talk about my vagina anymore,” she was heard to shout at the top of her voice. And so she did. She never spoke of the subject again although this event marked her forever.
The relationship with Lee ended after she denounced him for beatings and physical violence. In 1998 the musician was sentenced to 6 months in jail, to attend an anger management workshop and to pay his ex-wife’s legal fees.
At the turn of the century, Pam bet again on love. She was in a relationship with Calvin Klein’s Swedish model Marcus Schenkenberg, but the flamboyant relationship lasted barely a year. In the meantime, the actress had to deal with a difficult illness, hepatitis C, which she was diagnosed with in 2002. “When it was detected, the doctors gave me ten years to live. I went into a self-destructive dynamic, I panicked about being alone,” she had revealed to Vanity Fair magazine.
Everything seemed to be on track when that same year she met the singer Kid Rock. But again, another romantic relationship in her life would not prosper beyond twelve months. They separated in 2003 after getting engaged in Las Vegas. However, the couple gave each other a second chance and this time they got married on a friends’ yacht in Saint Tropez, France. Pam became pregnant but had a miscarriage. Not even a year later, the marriage would break up this time completely.
Meanwhile, she continued to have occasional sexual encounters with Tommy Lee. The father of her children was present in her life for many years, even when she was with other partners. They even got back together in 2008 but the relationship did not prosper either.
The pandemic found her alone and with the opportunity to fall in love again. Despite the isolation, in December 2020, the Baywatch star married her bodyguard, Dan Hayhurst. But history would repeat itself: the relationship lasted less than a year, as if they had an expiration date.
Pamela Anderson with her son Brandon Lee
When in January of this year, Anderson published her autobiography Love, Pamela, simultaneously with the premiere of the Netflix documentary, Pamela Anderson, A Love Story, the writer and actress revealed “being very proud of this book.” With the production of her son, Brandon Tomas, now 26 years old, from her Instagram account she described what it felt like to review part of her life. “It feels like a kind of miracle: retracing the painful steps of my youth. I repainted in detail scenes from my childhood or at the Playboy mansion. Just the messy life of a child. A celebration: of imperfections. The book is an unpolished attempt. No co-author.”
She, who always enjoyed the approving gaze of millions, recounted that she felt judged and ridiculed by the press on several occasions. In her stories, she reveals that to cope with the painful and traumatic vicissitudes of her life, she appealed to the imagination. “That’s how I learned to control my life. With one fantasy after another.” A crude summary of his reality.
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