I’m much more than a pair of breasts… I’m a survivor but I need someone to stop me getting wed, says Pamela Anderson

She was the celebrity who defined a decade – a global phenomenon and the biggest sex symbol of the ’90s. 

From humble beginnings, Pamela Anderson was plucked from obscurity and became an icon, one who continues to generate headlines 30 years after she first donned the famous red Baywatch swimsuit. 

But while it was undoubtedly her blonde-bombshell curves that initially captured global attention, it has been the various dramas of the six-times-wed beauty’s tumultuous private life that have kept her in the spotlight and proved endlessly fascinating to a watching world.

The doomed marriage to bad-boy rocker Tommy Lee, now 60, the leaked sex tape that threatened to destroy her career, the multiple husbands, her links to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and her political activism have all made sure that Pamela has never been far away from a headline or three.

And this month a new fully authorised Netflix documentary and self-penned memoir promise to further fuel the public interest – as well as providing Pamela, now 55, with an opportunity to set the record straight and reclaim her story, after last year’s miniseries Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James, reportedly left her “heartbroken” over how she was portrayed.

The documentary and autobiography are both deeply personal projects.

Pamela: A Love Story has been produced by her eldest son Brandon, 26, while no ghostwriter has been involved in the book, Love, Pamela – they are her words on a “messy” life, and she’s the first to admit that the result is “raw and unpolished” because of that.

“It’s a very personal true account of my life, from my first memory to my last,” Pamela says.

“No ‘woe is me’, though some times were tough. I made it through and had to find love in grace and dignity mixed with humour, acceptance and forgiveness.”

She added it had been: “a painful lesson in humility,” and that: “to live my life twice was once too often.”

Her life, she wrote, had been made up of “a thousand imperfections, a million misconceptions.”

It’s certainly true that there is far more to her than initially meets the eye.

“People see me as a dumb blonde,” she once said. “It’s an advantage because then I have nothing to live up to… You surprise people when you form a full sentence.”

She added: “I’m much more than a pair of breasts… I represent success, hard work and fun.”

Pamela Denise Anderson grew up in the small town of Ladysmith in Canada’s British Columbia, the daughter of a furnace repairman and a waitress – a world away from the glamour of Hollywood.

Her childhood was blighted by abuse, which she didn’t speak out about publicly until 2014, when she revealed she’d been sexually assaulted by a female babysitter at the age of six, raped at 12 by a 25-year-old male acquaintance and later gang-raped by a high-school sweetheart and his friends.

“I wanted off this earth,” she said of the attack. “This meant I had a hard time trusting humans.”

Aged 21, she moved to Vancouver and worked as a personal trainer.

At an American football game in 1989, she was captured on the stadium’s big screen wearing a Labatt’s beer T-shirt.

The camera loved her and the subsequent buzz led to her being shot for the cover of Playboy in October of that year, wearing an unbuttoned school blazer and a strategically-placed boater hat.

She was made Playmate of the Month in February 1990 and, to date, is still the most covered star in the magazine’s history.

“My career only took off because of one football game,” she recalled.

“I thought it was funny. Playboy called and offered me a cover just like that. I turned them down initially, but they kept coming back, so I eventually said yes.”

By the end of 1990, Pamela had undergone her first boob job – taking her up to a 34D – and moved to Hollywood in search of superstardom.

Her fresh-faced, girl-next-door looks appealed to TV execs and she was cast in the American sitcom Home Improvement for two seasons. 

But it was landing the role of lifeguard CJ Parker in Baywatch in 1992 that sent her career into the stratosphere.

The series aired in over 140 countries and Pamela quickly became the star of the show.

Meeting Mötley Crüe wild man Tommy Lee at a New Year’s Eve party in 1994 boosted her fame further.

He made the first move, licking her face from chin to temple, and they arranged to meet up six weeks later in Cancun, Mexico.

Just four days into that trip, they married on the beach, the bride dressed in a white bikini and the two of them getting tattoos of each other’s names on their ring fingers.

“It really was love at first sight,” said Pamela, describing their relationship as “intense, crazy and fun”. 

It was also toxic and, although their first son Brandon was born in June 1996, followed by Dylan in December 1997, the whirlwind romance quickly became a volatile marriage, during which Tommy was jailed for six months after assaulting Pamela in 1998. 

And then there was the sex-tape scandal. Apparently made during their honeymoon, the 54-minute recording – of which eight minutes featured the couple having sex – was stolen from a safe in their house in 1995 by a workman who claimed they owed him money for renovations.

It ended up in the hands of so-called “internet wonderkind” Seth Warshavsky, founder of Internet Entertainment Group, and over the next two years, Pamela and Tommy fought through the courts to prevent it being made public. 

They were eventually advised by their lawyers to settle out of court and sign a contract allowing a one-time online release on the condition it was never re-broadcast and no copies were sold on. 

“I was seven months pregnant with Dylan and thinking it was affecting the pregnancy with the stress,” Pamela said, explaining why they effectively signed away their copyright.

“I said: ‘I’m not going to court anymore. I’m not being deposed anymore by these horny, weird lawyer men. I don’t want to talk about my vagina anymore or my public sex – anything.’”

The contract Pamela and Tommy had signed underestimated the power of the internet, which was still in its infancy.

The film went viral and Warshavsky made a deal with adult distributor Vivid Entertainment to sell VHS copies to anyone who wanted them.

Though Pamela and Tommy sued Warshavsky and won in 2002, by that time IEG no longer existed and they never saw a penny of the £1.2million compensation they were awarded. 

“I’m just horrified,” said Pamela at the time. “I don’t know why I bother to put on clothes when I go out any more.”

The impact was shattering and the fallout exposed society’s deep-rooted misogyny.

While Tommy was celebrated as a stud, she was slut-shamed, vilified and had her career derailed just as it was taking off, making it difficult for her to be taken seriously as an actor. It’s an ordeal that still haunts her.

“That stupid tape,” said Pamela back in 2015, nearly 20 years after the saga had begun. 

“I can’t believe the interest in it hasn’t died down. It made for a very uncomfortable talk with my sons – you have no idea. But looking back at it, at least my hair looked good!”

After five seasons on Baywatch, Pamela announced she was quitting to pursue other acting opportunities in 1997, but it was never going to be an easy transition.

Her first mainstream movie lead, Barb Wire, had already bombed at the box office.

“People have a very fixed image of who I am and what I can do,” she said, “but I’d rather do more creative projects than just pop out another TV show… I’ve always got away with murder, running around in a bikini, but I knew I was capable of more than I’d been asked to do in the past.”

She went on to enjoy some success with Scary Movie 3 and Borat (as herself) as well as the TV series VIP, but it was her love life that continued to dominate the news.

She divorced Tommy in 1998 and fought a long custody battle over the boys, which was finally settled in 2002.

The same year, Pamela revealed she had hepatitis C as a result, she said, of sharing a tattoo needle with her ex-husband, claiming he had not disclosed to her that he had the virus.

There was a serious romance with Swedish model Marcus Schenkenberg before she married Kid Rock in July 2006 on a yacht in Saint-Tropez.

The marriage lasted just four months, and by February 2007 Pamela admitted during an interview that she was still sleeping with Tommy.

Nevertheless, in October that year she married poker player Rick Salomon, but they separated in December and the marriage was annulled in February 2008.

They remarried in 2014, but divorced a year later, and she would later speak about their “awful relationship” and how it aged her.

“I look back at pictures of myself and I looked 20 years older,” she said. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but happiness has a lot to do with beauty.”

Meanwhile, Tommy’s alcoholism meant his relationship with his sons was falling apart, and it came to a head in 2018 when he accused Brandon of attacking him in a since-deleted Instagram post. Pamela cut ties with her ex following the incident.

“I will never talk to Tommy again before he is sober and in his right mind,” she wrote on her website.

“Though he’s made attempts to contact me, I’ve blocked him. It’s impossible to reason with crazy.

“Nobody understands the lifetime of disappointment this man has brought our family. Consistently the centre of sadness, drama and confusion.

"Jealous of his sons’ talent and beauty from the day they were born. He is sick. The definition of narcissist/sociopath.” 

She added that she prayed Tommy would get help for “the disease of alcoholism” and compared him to the devil.

The family have since reconciled.

Pamela married Hollywood producer Jon Peters in January 2020, but it was annulled after less than a fortnight and by the end of the year she had wed her bodyguard Don Hayhurst, before splitting in January 2022.

“I’m a complete romantic,” she once said. “It’s why I always get married. Someone should really stop me.”

A committed vegan, Pamela now lives back in Canada on Vancouver Island, a place where she feels like she’s “come full circle”. 

She campaigns with animal rights charity PETA, has supported the Yellow Vests movement in France, which fights against economic inequality, appeared on TV with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and supports Julian Assange, who is currently in London’s Belmarsh prison appealing extradition to the US to face charges in connection with the publication of leaked documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

“I’m an activist, and I’m not doing it for myself,” she’s said. “I do it for animals and people who are vulnerable and can’t speak for themselves.”

Using her voice has helped shift some of the misconceptions about her, but Pamela accepts there’s still a battle to be won.

“I realise there’s an image of me that over the years evolved to a kind of cartoon. It’s hard to accept it.

"I’m always in a ridiculous battle to convince people that I have something to say. And even people closest to me try to protect me. ‘Don’t use this photo, it’s too sexy’, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’. F**k off! Let me be me.”

Surely the documentary and memoir will help. Pamela is complex and impulsive, and a survivor with a powerful story to tell.

“What I’ve gone through has only made me stronger. Anything you survive does.

"And I’ve learned a lot of lessons about patience and separating myself from all the garbage. One of them is that you have to believe everything is a blessing, even if it’s one in disguise. 

“You can get through it if you trust that it’s all for a reason.”

She added: “I’m not a victim but a survivor, and alive to tell the real story.” 

• Watch Pamela: A Love Story on Netflix, January 31. Love, Pamela (£20, Headline) is also out on January 31.