"People always tell me, 'Reinvent yourself, re-this, re-whatever.' I haven't reinvented myself. It's an honest evolution. I've always been authentic."
Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian-American actor, model, producer, author, activist and former showgirl, known for her roles on the television series Home Improvement, Baywatch, V.I.P., and Stacked. She was chosen as a Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine in February 1990 and has posed for the magazine multiple times since (she has also appeared on the cover of Playboy more than any other woman). For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee (or Pamela Lee) after marrying Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. She also did the voice over work for the titular character in Stripperella, an animated series by Stan Lee, which also used her likeness. In 2022 she made her Broadway debut, playing Roxie Hart in Chicago to largely positive notices.
She is considered by many to be one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1990s. Since Anderson's nakedness has appeared in Playboy the most times (14 covers and 15 spreads), they asked her to be on the cover of their final 2015 nude issue (apparently too many people do read it for the articles). Not bad going for a 48-year-old Canadian rose.
She's always been very active politically. Her character in Baywatch was a flower power type girl. In fact half the Baywatch cast were vegans and adamant animal rights activists. (She actually had some P.R. issues to repair after single-handedly making Uggs a thing, as Uggs are animal cruel.) She also called out the PM of Australia being "lewd" on commercial radio, in what was an entirely unforced error on his part.
Some of her films:
- Snapdragon (1993)
- Raw Justice (1994)
- Naked Souls (1996)
- Barb Wire (1996)
- Scooby-Doo (2002)
- Scary Movie 3 (2003)
- Pauly Shore Is Dead (2003)
- Borat (2006)
- Hollywood And Wine (2010)
- Baywatch (2017)
- City Hunter: The Cupid's Perfume (2019)
Some of her television shows:
Tropes Associated with Pamela Anderson
- Action Girl: Pamela has always been athletic, and in Baywatch she performed most of her own stunts (in fact, when she first joined the cast of Baywatch she didn't even know that the use of stunt doubles was common in the entertainment industry).
- Acting for Two:
- In Snapdragon (which she later described as "a bad movie (she) was thrown into").
- In Futurama she has played herself and also voiced Dixie in the episode with the Slurm Factory.
- Actor-Inspired Element:
- Betty and Veronica: Pam's public image has been both. In her earliest Playboy appearances, she has a fresh-faced, cute, girl-next-door look. But once she started getting famous, Pam's public image changed to that of a sultry blonde sex goddess.
- Billing Displacement: In the film Naked Souls she has considerably less of a role than her high billing would indicate.
- Celebrity Cameo: She appears at the start of the live action Scooby-Doo (2002) film, as a celebrity endorser for the toy factory.
- Celebrity Paradox: She guest starred on an episode of 8 Simple Rules as one of CJ's dates. In Season 2, Rory had casually referenced the infamous sex tape between her and Tommy Lee.
- Creator Backlash:
- Her first film Raw Justice, due to the sex scenes she had to do.
"I was thrown around, I was scratched, I was bruised, I was bitten. I cried, I went home, I called my mother"- She had such a bad experience on Good Cop, Bad Cop that she swore off doing sex scenes for film afterwards.
- Dawson Casting: In Scary Movie 3 she plays a teenage girl when she was in her mid-thirties. Of course the movie was parodying The Ring for that scene.
- Doing It for the Art:
- Although she hated doing sex scenes, she did some graphic ones in Naked Souls because she felt they were important to the story.
- She chose to do the video for Miserable for free, just as long as she could bring her usual hair and makeup team and they were paid. This was because she really wanted to play the Giant Woman but knew she might be too expensive.
- Dye Hard: Pam's hair is naturally brown. She started dying it blonde when she was 20 years old and has been doing it ever since.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Played with via literal inversion. She was the eye candy in a music video, but she ate the men who were enjoying her.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: With the exception of Marilyn Monroe, Anderson is possibly the most famous blonde bombshell in Hollywood history. During the peak of her popularity, her personal life was covered heavily by celebrity gossip magazines and she dated several famous male celebrities (including Scott Baio, David Spade, Chris Angel, and multiple rock musicians). Hugh Hefner himself compared Pam to Marilyn Monroe on multiple occasions (and Hef would know, considering that he photographed Marilyn for the very first issue of Playboy back in the 1950s).
- Fake American: Had a tendency to be considered a Valley Girl in her roles, even though she is Canadian."I am the ultimate California girl, which is funny, being that I'm Canadian."
- Femme Fatale: Her role in Barb Wire was as a femme fatale.
- Fountain of Expies:
- In comics, games and animation in the nineties, many Ms. Fanservice characters were blatantly based on her.
- Not to mention that, being the world's biggest sex symbol, many women in the 90s tried to copy Pam's look. Some of them even went as far as to get barbed wire tattoos.
- Giant Woman: Played one in a music video, where the band got to climb all over her. She was also a maneater.
- Home Porn Movie: In 1997 a sex video of Anderson and Tommy Lee was stolen from their home and sold to a pornographic video distributor. The Lees sued the distributor to stop the video from being sold, but failed. There have also been rumors that in the mid-2000s, a major porn studio offered Pam several million dollars to star in a professionally-shot porn movie, but she declined. The affair has been dramatized into a Mini Series, Pam & Tommy, where Pamela is played by Lily James and Tommy Lee is played by Sebastian Stan. Anderson disapproved of that latter project from the get-go.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Erotica Jones in Stripperella is voiced by Pam as well as having an appearance based on her.
- Irony as She Is Cast: Is a vegan, but jumped at the chance to be a giantess that devours male musicians alive.
- I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Carmen Electra stars in an episode of Stacked as Skylar's old rival. Jenny McCarthy does likewise in another episode.
- Leslie Nielsen Syndrome: Around the 2000s Pam started Adam Westing her Ms. Fanservice image, and appeared in more sitcoms, comedy movies or cameo gags.
- Literal Man Eater: In the music video for "Miserable," she plays a giantess who devours all the male band members at the end.
- Love at First Sight: Tommy Lee has stated that he was obsessed with Pamela from the moment he met her, even going as far as to follow her to a photo shoot in Mexico in an attempt to woo her. Pam didn't take to Tommy quite as quickly, but still fell for him fast considering that they married four days after meeting each other.
- Ms. Fanservice: The main reason why people watched Baywatch was probably hot people running on the beach in swimsuits and being wet in Slo Mo. Ms. Anderson took the cake. In fact her whole career was built on being this.
- Professional Wrestling:
- Seconded WWE World Heavyweight Champion
Diesel for his match against Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XI in 1995. - Kissed fellow Canadian and borderline doppelganger Trish Stratus at a Canada Walk of Fame event in 2006.
- Seconded WWE World Heavyweight Champion
- Roman à Clef: Her 2004 novel, Star.
- Self-Deprecation: Pam seems quite aware of the fact that her looks, and not her acting ability, are the reason she's famous. And she's not above poking a little fun at herself."My breasts have had an incredible career. I've just tagged along for the ride."
- Significant Birth Date: Pamela Anderson already appeared in Canadian newspapers right after her birth because she was born exactly 100 years after the formation of the Dominion of Canada at 0.01 a.m. and therefore became Canada's "centennial baby".
- Spit Out a Shoe: She does this in the music video for Miserable after slurping up the band's lead guitarist.
- Star-Derailing Role:
- In the mid-90s, Pam had a successful career as a model and television actress, as well as having roles in a few low-budget films. She decided that she wanted to become a major motion picture actress and, against the advice of her agent, accepted the lead role in Barb Wire. However, when the movie was blasted by critics and bombed at the box office, it killed Pam's hopes of becoming a film star.
- Similarly, Pam's role in the short-lived sitcom Stacked (which was canceled after only 14 episodes had aired) seems to have killed her career as a television actress.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene: Being a sex symbol, she's invoked this a lot. However, her two most iconic are her red one-piece swimsuit from Baywatch and her white bikini with black trim paired with black platform pumps from Miserable.
- What Could Have Been:
- She auditioned for the role of Rennie in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.
- She dropped out of the film Miami Hustle and was sued for $5 million because of it. Her reasoning was that she was getting sick of filming sex scenes.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman:
- Dancing with the Stars called her "The World's Sexiest Woman" in promos for the season in which she competed.
- Similarly, Stan Lee once described Pam as "the sexiest woman in the world" while working with her on Stripperella.
