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From Pinup to Muse: Pamela Anderson’s Next Chapter
Pamela Anderson posed for a portrait at the photographer Luke Gilford’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Emily Berl for The New York Times
By SOPHIA KERCHER
March 8, 2016
LOS ANGELES — On a sun-soaked Southern California morning in the Hollywood Hills, the perennial pinup Pamela Anderson considered whether or not she had been afraid when she got breast implants. “I didn’t even have time to think about it,” she said in her breathy girlish voice. “It was done within a week, and that was that.”
Ms. Anderson wore black ballet flats and a Crest-white coatdress that, despite its modesty, didn’t mask her tan bombshell physique. “It was very ’80s,” she said as she fumbled with her top button. “A different time.”
It was a time when the standards of beauty were not soft Botticelli bodies, Twiggy-thin frames or the kind of androgynous looks that now rule the runways. When Ms. Anderson arrived in Los Angeles as a wide-eyed Canadian transplant of 22, the women who intrigued her were the buxom blondes in the music videos that permeated MTV, and airbrushed ’80s-era Playmates.
“I would look at all these girls on the walls of Playboy, and I would go: ‘Look at their breasts, look at their bodies. How’s that even possible?’”
Now 48, Ms. Anderson recently divorced her third husband and has recovered from a health struggle with hepatitis C. Her two boys are fully grown, 18 and 19. This year, she was the last nude cover model of Playboy, just before Hugh Hefner put his iconic mansion up for sale. The January/February double issue marked the last time the Playmates would be shown in all their naked glory — a sign of the times, the publication having fallen prey to the digital age and the onslaught of Internet pornography.
Ms. Anderson in the film “Connected.”Luke Gilford
Ms. Anderson said that Mr. Hefner called to ask her to appear on the final nude cover. “He says there’s nobody else from Marilyn to Pamela,” she said. Her eyes, deep pools of blue, shimmered. “How could I say no? We shot at the mansion. I got to roll down the grassy hill in the front for the last time — naked.”
It was bittersweet, she said, but as she pointed out, any woman with an iPhone can now cast herself as a pinup on Instagram and Snapchat. “Now girls are shooting pictures down their tops, retouching them and putting the images up to the world,” she said.
With her final frolic at the mansion, Ms. Anderson is poised to start what she calls “Chapter 2” of her life. For a decade or more, she has been taking steps toward that end.
A few years ago, she chopped her long platinum hair into a chic pixie cut and tucked away her cleavage in a stylish spread in Elle. The photograph nudged the public to recognize what many close to her have known all along: that perhaps there’s more to the actress than her inflated-doll image and her tangled relationships with bad boys — having sex on tape with Tommy Lee or wedding Kid Rock in a slinky white bikini.
In 2014, the Pamela Anderson Foundation, dedicated to human, animal and environmental rights, was introduced in Cannes, France. During the introductory event, Ms. Anderson revealed that she had suffered frequent sexual assault as a child. She shared that she had been molested by a female babysitter from age 6 to 10, raped by a man in his mid-20s when she was 12 and sexually assaulted again at 14 by her boyfriend and his six friends.
Her son Brandon was with her when she made the startling announcement. “I talked to him beforehand,” she said, “and he was a little rattled by it.” It was important to be honest with her sons, she said. “Then they can understand some of the decisions I’ve made and where I come from.”
Playboy, it’s often said, objectifies women, but Ms. Anderson asserts that it empowered her. Was it also a way to take charge of her own sexuality? The New York artist Marilyn Minter, who in 2007 covered Ms. Anderson with glitter and featured her in a series of dreamlike portraits, thinks so.
“It’s really stunning how people underestimate her,” said Ms. Minter, whose work explores culture’s contradictory and often complex emotions surrounding the female body and its imperfections. “I’ve always been intrigued by Pam, because I think she owns the agency of her own sexually. She makes a living being a pinup. She’s extremely beautiful, and she’s not some Svengali. She’s the opposite of Anna Nicole Smith or Marilyn Monroe.”
Ms. Minter is not the only artist is in the Anderson circle. When asked whom she considers friends in Hollywood, Ms. Anderson demurred and said she has more friends in the art world. She has been muse to Jeff Koons, who has featured several of her body parts in his work, and she is close to the photographer David LaChapelle, the British designer Vivienne Westwood and the Southern California pop artist Ed Ruscha.
“She leaves a room radioactive.” Mr. Ruscha said when asked about the star. He added that she knows her way around the art world and calls her a “diamond in the rough.”
Ms. Anderson and her sons, Brandon Lee, left, and Dylan Lee, right, at the Saint Laurent show in Los Angeles in February. Emily Berl for The New York Times
Ms. Anderson’s attraction to the arts has rubbed off on her younger son, Dylan. Hedi Slimane recently chose him to front the current Saint Laurent fashion campaign. In a short black-and-white film, Mr. Slimane created a love letter to the California coast starring a surfboard-toting, guitar-strumming Dylan.
“I think he’s going to be an artist one day,” Ms. Anderson said.
Her inimitable dazzle recently caught the attention of James Franco, who wrote a profile of her for the Playboy issue, and the two hope to collaborate on a project. She has also been approached by the director Werner Herzog. As Ms. Anderson tells it: “He wrote me a letter and said, ‘I’ve always wanted to work with you, and I’m watching your career, and I really feel like I see something in you, and something you’re capable of that maybe you don’t even know.’”
It is the same feeling that attracted the young filmmaker and photographer Luke Gilford, who calls Ms. Anderson the sex symbol of his generation. He approached her after he saw images of her with newly cropped hair.
“I pursued her, and I still do,” Mr. Gilford said with a laugh. The two have been co-conspirators in photography and film projects ever since. They are together so often that the tabloids have taken notice, referring to Mr. Gilford as a “mystery man.”
Last month, Milk Studios in Los Angeles had the premiere of Mr. Gilford’s short narrative film “Connected,” which stars an unvarnished Ms. Anderson looking powerful and chic and, in other scenes, vulnerable. At the center of the film is her character, who is grappling with the shifting standards of beauty and getting older.
“It was so refreshing to do this role, and play somewhere where I’m at in my life,” she said.
Ms. Anderson is thoughtful and open, and full of humor on this bright morning in Mr. Gilford’s sleekly designed home, which she jokes is outfitted with “sexy, phallic plants.” For a woman who made her mark on the world with her body — her curvaceous figure in a red “Baywatch” bathing suit sprinting along the beach is etched in popular culture’s subconscious — it’s not difficult to believe there is more to come from her.
“All these young indie film people seem to be looking at me from a different perspective from my peers because they are younger and they have seen me, kind of, grow up,” Ms. Anderson said. “They are doing their own art, and they look and realize: ‘Wow, maybe she would have been an artist. Maybe this was performance art all along.’”
The Honorable Andrew Cuomo Governor of New York
The Pamela Anderson Foundation
March 7, 2016
The Honorable Andrew Cuomo
Governor of New York
Dear Governor Cuomo,
I'm frequently in New York, and I've been following your admirable efforts to rehabilitate the state's inmates through education. I have a suggestion that dovetails nicely with your prison reform plans while also helping to resolve the state's budget crisis. Since New York has over 52,000 inmates, you could save almost $2 million a year and improve the health of the prisoners by switching to nutritious vegan meals in correctional facilities.
If you left meat off menus in the 54 state-run prisons, New York taxpayers would save more than $1.7 million a year. Beans, rice, lentils, pasta, potatoes and other vegetables, and oranges and other fruits have all the nutrients a person needs but at a fraction of the cost of meats and cheeses. There would also be enormous savings on freezer costs and spoilage, since most vegan foods and ingredients can be shipped and stored without refrigeration.
These huge tax savings are based on the $273,000 in reduced costs reported by the Maricopa County Jail in Arizona, when it switched to all-vegetarian food for its 8,000 inmates. Last year, I went there with representatives of PETA to serve lunch to the prisoners and can report that they were impressed by the freshness and quality of the food. If New York follows Arizona's lead in switching to meat-free meals in jail, I'd be happy to inaugurate the program by helping cook lunch and serve it to the inmates.
Numerous top studies have shown that a plant-based diet significantly reduces the risk of obesity and cancer and can even reverse heart disease and diabetes. Vegan meals would decrease prisoner health-care costs long-term, which would have a significant beneficial impact on New York families, given the increased likelihood of obesity and other chronic diseases contracted while in prison.
It's heartening to know that you plan to reform New York's correctional system. I hope you use this suggestion as one way of achieving that end, while also addressing the state's budget crisis. PETA and I would be happy to work with your team, as we did in Arizona, to create a low-cost meal plan for your correctional facilities. I hope to have the opportunity to help you launch it.
Respectfully yours,
Pamela Anderson
Honorary PETA Director
PammiesLife.com
Charity Tee
AT HOME WITH AMERICA'S MOST DOWN-TO-EARTH BOMBSHELL
Pamela Anderson's still got it.
Pamela Anderson is not your average Hollywood celebrity.When our crew arrives at her home in Malibu, she greets us barefoot, hair in rollers, having already ordered and set up vegan lunch and juices for everyone from her favorite neighborhood spot, SunLife Organics. Her house, while beautiful and modern—all wood and windows and shabby chic white punctuated by pink orchids—isn't grand. You don't have to take your shoes off; the closet wouldn't qualify as a studio apartment, even by NYC standards. She flips through the rack of clothing that's been pulled for the shoot and gives every piece the stamp of approval. By the end of the day, she'll have offhandedly shared revealing anecdotes about exes (like the time Kid Rock punched through the glass on photographs of Marilyn Monroe hanging next to her bed during a fight), called her mother on speaker to get family beauty secrets ("Drink lots of wine. Don't worry about things. Oh, I don't know, Auntie Vie smeared Crisco all over her face and then in the morning scraped it off and made a pie.") and served us champagne and tomato soup around the kitchen island. You get the feeling she'd let you spend the night if you didn't make an effort to get up and leave.
Amélie Pichard x Pamela Anderson CJ mules, ameliepichard.com.
But Anderson isn't so laid-back about everything; namely, animal rights. Like Brigitte Bardot, the sex-symbol-turned-activist before her, she's been lending her voice, and body, to causes ever since she learned of the suffering behind "the stupid Ugg boots" she made popular on Baywatch. She's just returned from France, where she showed up at Parliament in support of a bill to ban foie gras ("And then what do they serve me on the plane back? Foie gras!") and she spends nearly our entire interview talking about the horrors of factory farming, SeaWorld and cosmetic testing. "Just because I've been on Baywatch and in Playboy doesn't mean I don't have a heart, soul and brain!" says Anderson, who's been putting all three into Pammies Life, her lifestyle site which will soon have "sustainable apparel and stuff for pets" but currently sells her line of vegan boots made out of recycled electronics; her cooking show, The Sensual Vegan ("We talk about aphrodisiacs and how meat makes you impotent."); and the cruelty-free beauty line she collaborated on with her longtime makeup artist and friend Alexis Vogel. Of the latter, she says, "It's all about bringing back the bombshell. Everyone wants natural beauty, but natural beauty still takes an hour and a half, so you might as well have fun with it. I'm not into the grunge, I-don't-give-a-crap look. I want to look like a woman." Below, Anderson talks femininity, her vegan lifestyle and aging gracefully:
You were so young on Baywatch—did you have any of the typical 20-something insecurities back then or have you always been comfortable with your body?
I was really comfortable in my skin and I didn't care so much. I thought, nobody's perfect and imperfections are sexy. And you know, I would've been on the beach anyway, so I was shocked that they hired me and paid me. I never thought I was a great-looking person or a great-looking woman. But I don't think I would've worn red. But any time I've worn red, even red nails, it's lucky for me because it's something I really don't gravitate towards. It's so weird, I want to hide my nails right now, but I'm doing a film based in the '20s and I have to get used to red nails, so I thought I'd play around with it.
"Aging happens when you're stressed and worried and jealous, or angry or bitter about your life."
Thirty years later and you're still appearing in Playboy with practically the exact same body. How have you maintained it?
I think part of it's genetic, I'm lucky, and I do pilates every once in a while, I walk my dogs. I'm very active, but I don't go to the gym or anything like that. My mom swears by Weight Watchers. You know, it's all food. Exercise is good for you, and it's good for stress relief and body shaping, but to lose weight, it's 80% food. It's just a matter of knowing a bagel is 10 points, so eat a piece of toast, which is 1 point. I think it's food and eating healthy, and walking and getting out in fresh air. I think actually that when you go to a gym and start working out, you gain weight because you're hungrier. I do! If I do any kind of exercise, I eat twice as much, but exercise is good for everything else.
Is aging a scary word for you?
No, aging isn't a scary thing for me because I look at my friends and they're beautiful, and my mom and my Auntie Vie—I was raised by really, fun exciting women. My family didn't have anything, but they always had a beautiful table set and they were always glamorous hosts. They didn't have anything but they still had the negligees, the eyeliner, the wigs. And you're just as old as you feel. I mean, when you're in a bad relationship at 20, you look older than a forty year old. I think good relationships and having positive people around you, people that really embrace who you are as a person, is really uplifting and anti-aging, you know? Aging happens when you're stressed and worried and jealous, or angry or bitter about your life. A lot of people I know have had really hard beginnings of their lives, and have turned that around and look so much better now than they did twenty years ago—it's amazing, it really is.
"I'm not into the grunge, I-don't-give-a-crap look. I want to look like a woman."
What's your beauty philosophy? What are you using every day in your routine?
I'm a coconut oil fanatic and I love the coconut from SunLife. They get me all the gooey coconut out of it and I just eat it. I think it's really good for your skin, good for your hair, good for everything, from the inside out. And I just use coconut oil that you buy at the store to cook with, and I leave it in the shower or I soak it when I'm in the bathtub so it melts and I'll use it all just as moisturizer for my face, my body, my hair, everything. I don't think those really expensive products do anything better than household products. My Auntie Vie was just splashing cold water on her face and using Crisco all over her face, you know, so I think it's simple and I'm not a big product person. Just be as natural as you can get, and then have fun with hair and makeup—be whatever your version of pretty is, as long as you feel confident. No one's to judge what's in fashion, but compassion is in fashion and it's sexy, so why not have this bombshell crazy look? There's this image that if you're vegan, you don't wear any makeup, you know, like flower child, and that's pretty, too, but some women want to be glamorous. I just don't like to follow trends. I stick to the basics, classic.
"I don't know if I wanna go on Baywatch and be like, the old lady working at a counter somewhere."
What did you learn about beauty on the Baywatch set?
I was just covered in Bain de Soleil. A lot of people drew abs on themselves, I never did that. I never wore sunblock, I didn't really believe in it. I always felt that it was chemicals going into your skin and particles that go into the ocean. People always tell me, "You have to wear sunblock all over your face," so I have a natural sunblock that I use sometimes, but I'm just gonna go with it and see what age does to me because I need to be in the sun. The first season, they didn't want me to wear makeup, they wanted me to be very natural. I said okay, but then I would go to Lexi's [makeup artist Alexis Vogel] at three in the morning and she would put eyelashes and liner on me and we just created that look, then I would show up, and they'd go, "You're already wearing makeup!" and I'd say, "No I'm not!" But then I'd get hit by a wave and my eyelashes would fall off and my makeup artist there would come up and go, "This is all that's left of Pamela, I hope you're happy—two little soaking wet eyelashes." But most of the time it would stay on; her makeup is nuclear. When I was on Barb Wire and had such a high-maintenance husband [Tommy Lee], I don't even think I slept for five months. I would sleep in my makeup and just touch it up the next day for three days in a row.
Are you going to see the remake?
Well, they called me and asked me to be in it, but I haven't decided yet. I don't know. I don't like remakes of TV shows and I kind of want to leave it as is and be remembered for that. I don't know if I wanna go on Baywatch and be like, the old lady working at a counter somewhere.
