Probably best known for her silicon enchanced role in Baywatch, and her explicit honeymoon video with her husband Tommy Lee which wasn't intended to be viewed by the public but was, vegetarian Pamela Anderson has had a long controversial career to date which started out from humble origins.
Famous From Birth
A brunette at birth, she was named Pamela Denise Anderson when born at 4:08am PST on Vancouver Island, Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada, on the 1st July 1967. She was labelled the Centennial Baby due to being the first child born in Canada on Canada's Centennial day. For this, her father, Barry, a furnace repair man, and her mother, Carol, a waitress, received $100 and an article in their local newspaper, the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle. Not long after this she moved with her family to Comox which is approximately 200 kilometres north of Vancouver. Here her parents bought a six-bedroomed house on Douglas Street.
Despite being Canada's Centennial baby, her family has Finnish ancestry, as her grandfather Herman was an immigrant from Finland. Herman was interested in New Age thinking and taught Anderson about crystals, meditation and dream interpretation, and that there was some truth in it.
Rubber Band
At school Anderson earned the nick-name Rubber Band due to her flexibility. She was good at nearly every sports she played and graduated from Highland Secondary School in 1985. In her year book she said that her ambition in life was "To be a California Beach Bum".
Three years later Pamela moved to Vancouver so she could try city living. Here she worked as a fitness instructorwith an ambition to become a bodybuilder. The next summer she went to a football game between the British Columbia Lions and the Toronto Argonauts in B.C. wearing a Labatt's t-shirt. During a slow period of the game, the cameras panned around the stadium and focussed on Anderson. This shot was shown on the big screen in the stadium and the whole crowd cheered enthusiastically. She was plucked from the audience and taken down to the 50 yard line and introduced to the crowd.
"I never intended to be in the business. I was in Vancouver at a football game and someone asked me to pose for Playboy. My boyfriend at the time said: 'Absolutely not!' The worst thing you can do is tell me NOT to do something."
Playboy
After the football game, the 36-22-34 bleach blonde signed a contract with Labbatt's to become the Blue Zone Girl, for the company's next ad campaign. The adverts were seen in bars and restaurants all over Canada. This campaign proved so popular that when Ken Honey, a freelance photographer based in Vancouver, sent photographs which he had taken of 5'7" Pamela to Playboy magazine, they asked her to star on the front cover. This made Pamela Anderson the Playboy cover model in October 1989. Since then Anderson has been on the front cover of Playboy 6 times, more than any other model, including Playmate of the Month for February 1990.
Baywatch
When Playboy asked her to model the first time, she moved to Los Angeles. Once there, as well as modelling, she had two small roles in Married with Children. This helped her earn the role of Lisa the Tool Time girl on Home Improvement with Tim "the tool man" Taylor. David Hasselhoff saw her and asked her to play C.J. Parker on Baywatch. Anderson agreed to play the role as it reminded her of herself and the knowledge her grandfather had taught her, however she had trouble working on both shows, so left Home Improvement after two seasons to work on Baywatch full time. She stayed with Baywatch for 5 years, including the time the show changed its name to Baywatch Miami, and became world famous due to it being shown in 140 different countries.
Whilst working on Home Improvement and Baywatch, Anderson started dipping her toe into numerous film roles. She has an uncredited role in The Taking of Beverly Hills, which was a flop at the box office in 1992 as well as starring in Snapdragon as Felicity.
In 1994, Anderson had the role of Sarah in Raw Justice, an HBO movie with David Keith, a close friend of Tommy Lee, a member of Motley Crue. This year she also starred in a CBS Movie of the week, Come Die With Me starring Rob Estes.
Tommy Lee
At the end of 1994 Pamela attended a New Year party in New York where a stranger, Tommy Lee, came up to her and licked her face. He spent the night begging for her telephone number, and after a while she relinquished and gave it to him. He tried to phone her numerous times, and eventually got a reply and the promise of a date which she cancelled at last minute to go on a photo shoot for sun-tan lotion in Cancun, Mexico. Despite this rebuff, he followed her to Mexico, and they got married 4 days later on the beach with Pamela wearing a white bikini and Tommy in shorts. This was on the 19th February 1995, however they renewed their vows for family and friends later in the year whilst wearing silver spacesuits.
Their marriage wasn't a smooth one, with Anderson leaving on numerous occassions, but they reunited repeatedly. Once she went back to Lee to help him in his fight against alcohol. After this she stayed for a while, and she got pregnant with Lee's baby which she miscarried whilst filming Barb Wire in 1995. Lee said of this,
"Our little angel is up there in good hands."
Barb Wire
Participating in Barb Wire by playing the role of a futuristic bounty hunter wasn't the best decision Anderson made. As well as losing a baby due to over work, her personal manager, Nick Stevens, was against the decision, but Anderson decided it was the right thing to do and went ahead anyway with the film opening on the 3rd of May 1996 throughout the USA, with Tommy Lee writing a song called Planet Boom for the soundtrack.
In December of 1995, The Sun newspaper invited Anderson and Lee to England for a holiday which they accepted. The couple gave an exclusive interview to the newspaper, and hoped that they would have a good time but the interview turned into a nightmare for the couple and focussed mainly on their sex life. Whilst in London, Anderson managed to get into trouble with the police for hassling the Queen's Guard by trying to make them lose their concentration. They then left London and travelled to Venice to renew their wedding vows. Their son, Thomas, was born at home on the 6th of June the next year with the help of a midwife.
Anderson's life was then relatively peaceful until May 1997 when she was sued for 5 million dollars after she pulled out of a film called Miami Hustle, however the Judge ruled that that she hadn't entered a legally binding contract with the film producers, and she won the case. By the end of the year she had given birth to her second child, at home again with the help of a midwife. They called him Dylan Jagger.
Divorce
Life still didn't run smoothly for Anderson though, as she eventually filed for divorce from Tommy Lee on the 26th February 1998 after he assaulted her. He was sent to jail for 6 months for the crime in May of the same year, but they did reunite briefly in June 1999 which was unsuccessful. In the lifetime of the marriage it had 3 divorces with 2 reconciliations plus half a year of time in prison. Anderson also reported Lee to the police for probation violation as revenge for another lover's tiff for which Lee had to spend 5 days in prison.
Earlier in the year, she had her infamous breast implants removed, allegedly to be replaced with smaller ones.
Since her final divorce from Lee, she has decided never to reconcile with him again and has dropped Lee from her last name permantly. She has also had the tattoo on her wedding finger which said Tommy's changed into Mommy's. Her private life is still as complicated though. She has dated many different people including Sylvester Stallone and Dean Cain. She dated Kelly Slater and was due to marry him until she met Markus Schenkenberg at the World Music Awards. She was engaged to Schenkenberg for a short while, but eventually the relationship fell apart. She has also made pornographic video tapes with Tommy Lee and Bret Michaels which are alleged to be two of the biggest selling porn tapes known. Baywatch co-star Donna D'Errico said of Anderson's man-eating reputation,
"If she had as many dicks sticking out of her as she's had sticking in her, she'd look like a porcupine!"
A court case came next for Anderson when an obsessed fan broke into her home and was found sleeping on her bed on 6th March 2001. The celebrity stalker pleaded guilty for breaking and entering and was sentenced to return to her home country of France for counselling.
Kid Rock
Since then she has met Kid Rock whose child she miscarried in November 2001. She got engaged to Rock in 2002 and is expecting her third child in May 2002. Things still aren't running smoothly for Anderson though. She claims that Lee gave her Hepatitis C though a shared needle from when they had a tattoo done at the same time. This is when Anderson had the Barb Wire tattoo around her left arm completed. Lee says that he has recently been tested for Hepatitis C and that he hasn't got it. This doesn't help Anderson though, for as well as being treated at the Los Angeles medical centre, she is fighting for custody of her two children.
As for her work life now,she is still acting and producing V.I.P. which she has been doing since 1998. It is her own syndicated action drama which is full of violence but with no deaths, in a similar way to the A-Team.
Television and Film Credits
Sources
http://www.imdb.com
http://www.allcelebnetwork.com/pamelaanderson/
http://www.supermodelguide.com/supermodels/pamela.html