SEX ON THE BEACH
After 6 marriages, I’m still in love with my ex-husband, says Pamela Anderson ahead of Netflix doc about life
SHE suffered in silence when her shocking sex tape ordeal was dramatised in the hit streaming series Pam & Tommy.
Now former Baywatch legend Pamela Anderson is set to blow the lid on her own personal life, as she makes 2023 the year people get to know “the real me”.
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The actress and model, 55, is releasing a highly personal docu- mentary this month along with a painfully frank memoir that will recount her six failed marriages, two of which were annulled.
And she reveals it was her two grown-up children she had with rock star Tommy Lee who convinced her to open-up about her wild past.
She says her businessmen sons Brandon, 26, and Dylan Lee, 25, argued it was time to set the record straight after they started their own production company to make Pamela, A Love Story.
Pamela said: “Sharing my story, first of all, is exciting. My kids are producing the Netflix documentary and the memoirs are really therapeutic because I was writing over the last year and I’m writing my own book, not with a collaborator or anything.
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“There might need to be subtitles, the publisher said.
“But it is me speaking and I have my own way of writing, which is not perfect, it’s imperfect, like me, but it’s very intimate and honest.”
In a series of interviews she described her sons as “my biggest cheerleaders”, adding: “I didn’t really want to drag them into this world but now that they are older and have their own businesses.
“They were like, ‘Mum this is it, we are going to protect you. This is our empire and people are going to get to know the real you, not just how they think they know you’.”
Reputation destroyed
Pamela was deeply upset by the Pam & Tommy series, in which she was played by English actress Lily James — who turned herself into the Playboy pin-up by wearing artificial boobs — with actor Sebastian Stan as her Mötley Crüe drummer ex-husband in the Disney+ series.
The drama portrayed her as an ambitious star with an outlandish personal life who feared her reputation would be destroyed by the release of their explicit sex tape in 1996 after it was taken from their home.
Particularly upsetting was that the TV series not only showed the robbery at Tommy’s Malibu mansion, when the videotape was stolen from his garage, but also recreated them making love on a speedboat on their honeymoon.
The sex tape, which they had recorded the previous year, was never intended to be made public.
Pamela bit her tongue until the final episode last year, when she released a handwritten statement on her Instagram account, saying: “My life. A thousand imperfections. A million misperceptions.
“Wicked, wild and lost. Nothing to live up to. I can only surprise you. Not a victim, but a survivor. And alive to tell the real story.”
The mother of two has decided that now is the time to give a warts-and-all account of what really happened.
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Her new documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, will be released on January 31 and will follow hot on the heels of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s controversial Netflix documentary, which set viewing records.
The initial trailers suggest Pammie will not only discuss her high-profile marriages with drummer Tommy, 60, who she tied the knot with in 1995 and divorced in 1998, and fellow rocker Kid Rock, 51, who she was married to for four months in 2006, before they filed for a divorce.
It will also delve into her more recent doomed romances with producer Jon Peters, 77, in 2020 (their marriage was annulled after 12 days) and with bodyguard Dan Hayhurst the same year which ended in divorce last year.
Even poker player Rick Salomon, 53 — who starred in a separate sex tape with Paris Hilton and whom Pammie married twice, the first of which was also annulled and the most recent of which ended in 2015 — is likely to get a mention.
“When you’re not looking for love, it finds you,” Pamela says in the promotional material. “And I guess I’m easy to find.
“I was very hesitant, but looking back I feel empowered. And I hope that my story inspires people to have a great f***ing time and not worry so much.”
Her book, Love, Pamela, is set to be released by HarperCollins on the same day and promises to be: “A heartrending, inti- mate memoir from the iconic pin-up and Play- boy’s last great Playmate.”
Pammie previously suggested Tommy was the great love of her life, saying in 2015: “I’ve never been out of love with Tommy.
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"We probably should've stuck it out, I don’t know. But again, at the time there was lots of craziness going on and people were following us around.”
She claimed Tommy started injecting steroids to try to achieve a chiseled body for her. He was jailed for six months in 1998 for assaulting her while she was cradling seven-week-old Dylan.
She added: “We married young and had babies right away and the whole point was that when he went to jail and everything he was taking steroids.
“I thought he was on heroin because I was finding needles everywhere. But he was trying to get big for me. So it was kind of sad, but we didn’t handle ourselves right and it fell apart.”
Pamela’s story has echoed that of fellow blonde bombshell, Fifties and Sixties actress Marilyn Monroe.
She too had a troubled childhood and — having been plucked from obscurity — she too became just as famous for her romances as for her screen success.
Pamela was watching an game in her native Canada in 1989 when the stadium’s camera zoomed in and her picture appeared on a huge screen.
The image went viral around the world.
Hollywood producers flew her to LA and asked her to choose between a role as CJ Parker on the new Baywatch series, about lifeguards on a Californian beach, and the much-loved Home Improvement sitcom.
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She said: “Coming from a small town and being a small-town girl, my first plane ride was to LA and to see the world that I have experienced.
“I remember I had to make a decision between going on Baywatch and Home Improvement and Baywatch just seemed much more physical. I loved the physicality and the swimming and doing my own stunts.
“You know, I would have been at the beach anyway and I thought, ‘This is great, I’m getting paid for this and I can bring my dog’.
Need to be more of me
“I didn’t know I was capable of that. I’ve always been good at grabbing opportunity when it comes, grabbing it by the throat and going for it. It’s scary and exciting all at the same time.”
In later life Pamela campaigned on political issues and for animal rights and last year fulfilled her dream of appearing in a Broadway play when she played Roxy in .
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After the role was announced — at the same time as Baywatch celebrated its 30th anniversary — she said: “It’s good timing because my kids are grown and it’s time.
"I need a challenge and I needed this. I’ve been gone for a little while and now I’m back. I like this feeling, that dangerous, crazy feeling that you can’t do something and then you surprise yourself.
“You don’t know what you are capable of until you try it. So that’s what I’m really curious about, because what can I do?
“I haven’t really applied myself to much in life aside from my children and my . . . anyway.
“Ten years ago they asked me to do this role and I said no because my kids were too small.
“I really needed it at this time in my life so the stars are aligning for sure. And this is for me.
"This is one decision I made for myself so it’s different. One thing I’ve realised recently is that I’ve always been willing to change — and I enjoy taking on a persona — but now I need to be more of me.
“When you believe in yourself other people believe in you too. That’s a cliched thing to say but as soon as I decided I’m good enough then all this stuff started happening and now I feel like I’m in the right place.”
She added: “People have asked me to be more like Pamela Anderson and I’m a real person, you are talking to a real person.
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“Everyone thinks I’m this wild and crazy person, which I am but, like, how would they know?
“I feel that sometimes when you become a caricature and cartoon and you don’t live up to people’s expectations you have to play this role. That’s my experience.”
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