Pamela Anderson (born July 1, 1967 in Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian-American adult model, actress, author, activist, and producer. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee. Anderson is best known for her large enhanced breasts, and modeling and acting in the 1990’s. Anderson has been called the sex symbol of the ’90s.[2] She ranks #4 in Playboy’s Top Ten Centerfolds of the Century. Anderson has been also called as the “Marilyn Monroe” of our generation. Today, Anderson is considered to be one of the hottest women over the age of 40.
She was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee (or Pamela Lee) after marrying Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. She holds both American and Canadian citizenship.
Anderson was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia, the daughter of Carol, a waitress, and Barry Anderson, a furnace repairman. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Saarijärvi, and left Finland in 1908, changing his name to Anderson when he arrived as an immigrant. Pamela Anderson has Russian ancestry on her mother’s side.
The newborn Anderson won fame as Canada’s “Centennial Baby”, because she was thought to have been the first baby born on Canada’s Centennial Day (she was born at 4:08 in the morning). However, the Campbell River Upper Islander of July 5, 1967 reported a baby born two hours earlier on the same Canada Day.
After graduating from Highland Secondary School in 1985, Anderson moved to Vancouver and worked as a fitness instructor. During the summer of 1989, Anderson went with her friends to a BC Lions game at BC Place; during the game she was shown on the stadium screen wearing a Labatt’s t-shirt, causing the crowd to cheer for the 21-year-old Anderson. She was taken down to the field to receive an ovation from the crowd. Labatt’s immediately offered Anderson a modeling contract and she accepted. In late 1989, Anderson decided to model for Playboy magazine. She first appeared as their October 1989 cover girl. At this stage in her modeling career, she had decided to live in Los Angeles to further pursue her career ambitions. She became a centerfold for Playboy when the magazine chose her to be their Playmate of the Month for their February 1990 issue. She then chose to get breast implants. Anderson has since appeared in Playboy several times in the 1990s and the following decade.
After her move to Los Angeles, she won a minor role as the original “Tool Time girl” on the hit television sitcom, Home Improvement. She left the show after two seasons and won the role of C.J. Parker on season 3 of Baywatch in 1992, a role that would last for 5 seasons of the show until 1997. Baywatch is still considered one of the most internationally watch TV shows of all time and greatly helped in making Pamela into a universal household name through out the 1990s. Anderson was still modeling for Outdoor Life and appearing on the cover of the magazine each year.
Aside from Baywatch’s massive popularity, Pamela Anderson Lee, her name as of 1995, had another bombshell moment in her life that impacted the world when a sex tape from her honeymoon with Tommy Lee had been allegedly stolen and leaked onto the internet. It made news headlines around the world for becoming the #1 most searched for thing on the internet. This was the first time a “viral” cultural phenomenon like this had happened in the world of celebrity and it wouldn’t be the last. She sued the company distributing the video on the internet and ultimately they settled out of court, but afterwards the company put the video back up for purchase and saw the sales triple compared to before. After that, another sex tape of Pamela with Brett Michaels, made before the one with Tommy Lee, was also released on the internet. Pamela’s star status had grown even larger due to these incidents, though this time fueled by infamy. This is a phenomenon that would later be seen again during the 2000s in the celebrity of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, and the idea of being famous for being famous.
In 1996, she acted in the film Barb Wire playing Barbara Rose Kopetski, which was thought by some to be Anderson’s real name. The movie, a thinly-veiled futuristic remake of Casablanca, was not a commercial success. Along with the film, she stared in the accompanying music video for “Welcome to Planet Boom” from the film’s soundtrack, along with Tommy Lee who created it. In April 1997, she guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. She also appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy.
In September 1998, Anderson starred as Vallery Irons in the Sony Pictures Entertainment hit syndicated show V.I.P. created by J. F. Lawton. Blending action and humor in a fast-paced adventure series, with Anderson often poking fun at her tabloid image, the show explored the exciting and sometimes treacherous lives of the rich and famous. The series lasted through a successful four year run.
In 1999, she appeared as a giantess in the music video for “Miserable” by California alternative rock band Lit.
Her role as C.J. Parker gave her more popularity and gained her attention from international viewers. She returned to Baywatch for the 2003 reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding. She also appeared on The Nanny as Fran’s rival, Heather Biblow.
Pamela became a super hero in 2003, or at least the voice actor of a super hero, when Marvel’s legendary Stan Lee created Stripperella, an animated action-comedy TV show about a stripper named Erotica Jones that was drawn in the likeness of Pamela Anderson, who becomes a Batman-like superheroine and secret agent named Stripperella whenever duty calls. The series was a departure from Stan Lee’s more conventionally child-friendly previous work in Marvel comics on series like X-men and Spiderman as this series had erotic scenes, sexual content and humor, adult language, and bare breasts (which was blurred for television but shown on DVD). Although, that was mostly just the case in the US, as in multiple other countries, she show aired completely uncensored and in some cases, like Germany, Italy, Latin America, and Brazin, it was also aired for all audiences.
In 2004, Anderson returned to the spotlight. In May, she appeared naked on the cover of Playboy magazine. It was the first time she had appeared naked on any magazine cover. Later, she posed naked for Stuff and GQ magazines.
Anderson became a naturalized citizen of the United States on May 12, 2004, while retaining her Canadian citizenship. She has lived in Southern California since 1989.
In 2004, she released the book Star, co-written by Eric Shaw Quinn, about a teenager trying to become famous. After this, she began touring the United States, signing autographs for fans at Wal-Mart stores nationwide. Her second book, the sequel Star Struck, released in 2005, is a thinly veiled look at her life with Tommy Lee and the trials of celebrity life.
In April 2005, Anderson starred in a new Fox sitcom Stacked as Skyler Dayton, a party girl (with implants), who goes to work at a bookstore. The legendary Christopher Lloyd was also a star on the show. The costume designers for the show stated in an interview how they had a hard time putting Pamela in something that didn’t have her nipples poke through and quickly gave up trying. For her role, she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award in the comedy category. It was canceled on May 18, 2006, after two seasons, although some episodes had not been aired. On August 14, 2005, Comedy Central created the Roast of Pamela Anderson to honor the sex symbol for the past decade. During her final speech at the Roast, Anderson referred to her breasts as “Pancho and Lefty”.
In December 2005, NBC cut off a video of Anderson pole dancing topless on Elton John’s “The Red Piano.” NBC said that the footage was inappropriate for primetime. The video was shown on huge screens during the event, while John played “The Bitch is Back”.
In March 2006, it was announced that Anderson would receive a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame thanks to her many years as a model and actress. She is only the second model to receive a star. In April 2006, Anderson hosted Canada’s Juno Awards, becoming the first non-singer and model to do so. In this year, she also starred in Kanye West’s music video for “Touch the Sky”.
Anderson was repeatedly referenced in the 2006 comedy film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan as the title character seeks to kidnap and marry her, after having fallen in love watching her on Baywatch. Anderson appears in person at the end of the film confronted by Borat in a staged botched abduction.
She performed on February 13–14, 2008 in a Valentine’s Day striptease act at the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris.
On July 9, 2008, Anderson entered the Australian Big Brother house for a three-day visit. Her appearance on this show also marked Anderson’s foray into reality television with a series of her own, Pam: Girl on the Loose, which debuted on August 3, 2008 on E! in the United States.
In December 2009, Anderson guest-starred as Genie of the Lamp in the pantomime Aladdin at the New Wimbledon Theatre in Wimbledon, south-west London, England. Anderson took over the role from comedienne Ruby Wax, with former EastEnders actress Anita Dobson and comedian Paul O’Grady also booked for the role.
Since 2010, Pamela’s on-screen appearances has continued to be of a reality-show nature, being a guest or contestant as her self. Notable examples of this is her time on Dancing with the Stars, as well as multiple international televisions shows such as in Turkey, Bulgaria, Argentina, and India (which was an appearance on Big Boss, the Indian version of Big Brother, where she entered the house for 3 days). She also shot various international commercials. Even after Baywatch ended in 1997, she continues to have an international presence in one way or another.
In 2014 Pamela revealed that she had experienced multiple instances of sexual abuse, rape, and even gang rape in her childhood and teenage years.
It was announced that an era was coming to an end in December of 2015 because Playboy was deciding to remove nudity from its magazines in 2016. Pamela Anderson was chosen, at the age of 48, for the honor of doing one last nude issue for the special double January-February 2016 issue, which was said to be the last nude issue Playboy would ever do. This would mark the 15th time she had been nude in one of Playboy’s issues and on the cover of Playboy for the 14th time. She only hesitated to do it at first because her two boys, now aged 17 and 19, had been teased growing up for who their mother was, but to her surprise her eldest son said “Mom, you’ve got to do it”, saying they were longer embarrassed but actually proud of their mother. Ultimately, though, Playboy did bring nudity back into their magazine in 2017, stating that removing it was a mistake, but the overall style of the magazine and the types of models they used had still changed in an attempt to win over a newer generation.
From 2016 to 2019, her long and multi-tiered life even came to intersect with founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange as she frequently voiced support of him and called him a Hero who was being unfairly maligned for doing a great thing for humanity, was angered by his April 2019 ejection from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, even went to meet him at HMP Belmarsh in May 2019 and reported on his condition, and actively made efforts in trying to get him freed.
One of Pamela’s proudest accomplishments has been the Pamela Anderson Foundation, or The PAF, through which has has been conducting her activism, awareness campaigns, and philanthropy for over 25 years (as of 2020) in regards to human, animal, and environmental rights. She’s made headlines in regards to her work with PETA on multiple occasions, raising awareness through sometimes controversial ads or stunts, which stems from her veganism, which began in her childhood after she watched her father cleaning an animal he had hunted. In 2015 Canada she was one of more than 50,000 signatories of the New Democratic Party’s Leap Manifesto, as well as endorsed the Green Party during the 2019 Federal Election.
As of July 1st 2019, she’s now moved back to her childhood home of Ladysmith, BC in Canada with her children. She has said to have plans to develop the area and create jobs.
Performances
Playboy Playmate: February 1990
