Despite her humble birth on July 1, 1967, in Ladysmith, British Columbia, to a waitress and jack-of-all-trades, the brunette in the photo’s birth was reported in a newspaper. She was the first centennial baby.
“I hope you die!” she told her former babysitter. Her first wedding took place on the beach. She thinks her new look is “a little rebellious.”
She went on to have an extraordinary life sparked by another instance of being in the right place at the right time. However, she first had to survive a traumatic childhood of violence and abuse.
Her parents were 17 and 19 when they had her and still went out occasionally. Somewhere between the ages of four and eight, she had a female babysitter who molested her for around a year.
The babysitter “sexualized” the girl at a very young age, making her play inappropriate games. One day, the caretaker told her because she is a “bad girl,” Santa Claus would not visit her that year.
“I ran after her in tears, calling her a liar… and clumsily stabbed her with a candy-cane-striped pen in her chest,” she penned in her memoir. “‘I hope you die!’ I screamed through tears.”
The female predator died in a car accident following her graduation not long after. On hearing the news, the girl came to believe it was her doing, that she had some extraordinary power. She carried this with her for her “entire young life,” eventually confiding in her mom and dad.
Her parent’s volatile relationship would also cause her to act out. Once, when the couple was fighting, she tried to divert attention away from it by telling her younger brother to hide while she convinced the town that he was missing.
Her father would dole out cruel punishments. When she went against his wishes to have her kittens in the house, he placed them in a paper bag and drowned them in the ocean. “I felt like I died that night, too,” she remembers.
Between ages 12 and 14, she was sexually assaulted twice, and a boyfriend kicked her out of a moving car. She once stopped her father from assaulting her mom further by punching him.
The young brunette became known as “Blue Zone Girl” when she was spotted on a jumbotron at a football game, but she would soon be renowned worldwide by her real name, Pamela Anderson.
A beer company scouted her as a spokesmodel, leading to a Playboy shoot. A “Home Improvement” role brought her into the mainstream, but she became a superstar portraying CJ on “Baywatch.”
Her whirlwind romance with drummer Tommy Lee crescendoed into a wedding on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, in 1995, where she wore a white string bikini and he was in trunks. The couple had two children, Dylan Jagger and Brandon Thomas.
The footage they made during their honeymoon was stolen and sold as one of the first sex tapes of the internet era. The actress has never watched the tape but has felt its effects. She wrote how it “ruined lives,” starting with their relationship.
Lee was sent to jail for four months after being found guilty of abusing his spouse. They got divorced in 1998. In 2012, she asked for full custody of their children, saying that Lee was both emotionally and physically abusive towards them.
Anderson has made a comeback in her career. She has taken control of her own story, which was often shaped by the media, by writing a memoir called “Love, Pamela” and appearing in a Netflix documentary that goes along with it.
Anderson returned to her hometown of Ladysmith, which is by the coast. She found it to be a healing place, with its “crazy calmness.” There aren’t many paparazzi on the island, so she feels safe. Now, she lives alone with her five dogs.
“I live a more romantic life now that I’m alone than I did in relationships,” Anderson said about her home, which is in her grandparents’ old farmhouse.
As a humanitarian, she enjoys running through the waves on the beach next to her property all year round. When she’s not working, she spends time in her 15,000-square-foot garden filled with vegetables and roses. She has also started doing pottery. “I’m very crafty. I didn’t realize,” she said.
In a January 2023 interview with People magazine, she admitted that she would like to have someone to share her life with, but often found herself focusing too much on her partner’s needs. After her marriage to Lee, she married Kid Rock and then married Rick Salomon twice (one of those marriages was annulled).
Her most recent marriage to Dan Hayhurst lasted only a few months and ended in 2021. The “V.I.P.” star has realized she doesn’t need a man to buy her roses:
“I’ve just planted a hundred rose bushes. I can get them any time I want — and they’re my favorite roses.”
In August 2023, she told Elle magazine that early mornings are her favorite time of day. During this time, Anderson writes a newsletter, joking that this keeps her from writing long, rambling emails to her sons.
Just as gardening and morning writing have replaced the party lifestyle she enjoyed when she was most famous, her well-known beauty look has also changed.
She used to be known for her big blond hair, thin eyebrows, heavy eye makeup, and tiny outfits that were “wild and uninhibited,” according to her. Anderson added:
“I don’t know if it was a defense mechanism or what. I just thought, ‘I’m going to have fun.’”
In recent years, she has been wearing less makeup, sometimes looking like she’s not wearing any at all. After her makeup artist, Alexis Vogel, passed away, she started to change her style. She explained:
“Alexis was the best. And since then, I just felt that without Alexis, it’s just better for me not to wear makeup.”
Even though she’s moved away from her old look, a new generation has rediscovered her Y2K style, and #Pamcore trends often on TikTok.
As an animal lover, Anderson feels that her new beauty look is “freeing, fun, and a little rebellious too.” When she looks in the mirror now, she feels “rooted for.” Pamela Anderson says she is in a good place.