In the first instalment of a two-part series, Vancouver Island actor Pamela Anderson talks about her Golden Globe nomination, life in the spotlight and what’s next.
Pamela Anderson shot three films in 2024: The Last Showgirl, The Naked Gun, and Rosebush Pruning. If the latter two come close to matching the impact of the first, which opens tonight at Cineplex Odeon Victoria and Sidney’s Star Cinema, the Vancouver Island native is going to have a year unlike any other in her 35-year acting and modelling career.
Anderson said she’s ready for her closeup.
“I’ve had this very unorthodox way of getting here,” Anderson, 57, said in an exclusive interview with the Times Colonist. “I’ve done a little bit of everything in my life, so I feel very grateful. Who would have thought I would have this career?”
The former Baywatch star, who attended Highland Secondary School in Comox, and lives part time in Ladysmith at an oceanfront estate, has drawn an avalanche of acclaim for her performance in The Last Showgirl, director Gia Coppola’s understated look at the life of an aging dancer on the rapidly-changing Las Vegas strip.
The performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination (for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture — drama), which many in the film industry south of the border felt Anderson had a realistic shot at winning (Fernanda Torres, for I’m Still Here, took home the award). None other than Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin led the charge, penning a column for Variety that called her titular turn in The Last Showgirl “one of the finest performances of this or any year.”
“Anderson isn’t just giving a great performance relative to expectations,” Sorkin wrote, “she’s delivering a great performance relative to her peers.”
When you consider her peers today include fellow nominees such as Demi Moore, Angelina Jolie, Tilda Swinton, and Kate Winslet, it’s clear Anderson has entered the conversation on an artistic level much higher than anything on her resumé to date. When she added to her awards season scoresheet a Screen Actors Guild nomination for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role, industry talk quickly turned to her netting a Academy Award nomination on Jan. 23.
That is where Anderson draws the line, in terms of believing her own hype. “I didn’t come from a family of movie people. But there is room for everybody. A lot of it has to do with what’s in the stars. I couldn’t have dreamt this up.”
Anderson will be pinching herself throughout 2025, if things go as planned. The remake of The Naked Gun (starring Liam Neeson) is slated for a blockbuster summer release, while Rosebush Pruning (directed by Karim Aïnouz and co-starring Riley Keough and Elle Fanning) is expected to make a splash on the independent film festival circuit. She’s all-in on acting at the moment, arguably for the first time in her career.
Anderson took acting classes in the past with Ivana Chubbuck, whose previous students include Oscar winners Brad Pitt and Halle Berry, but she was never presented with a starring vehicle to make good use of her talents. Barb Wire, a B-grade action film from 1996, was certainly not it, nor was buddy comedy Blonde and Blonder, a box-office bomb from 2009.
It’s remarkable to think that she would not have even been in her current position — with a potential Oscar nomination looming, and praise from A-list directors — had her previous agent, now relieved of his duties, succeeded in turning Coppola down when she presented him with a role tailored-made for Anderson.
“He thought I wouldn’t be interested,” Anderson said. “He didn’t tell me about it. Now I have a new agency. I told them: ‘Show me everything, please.’ I’m reading some very interesting things and have met with some really wonderful directors. I want to challenge myself. I want it to be very unexpected. I don’t have to agree with everybody. I’m going to do what I want to do.”
The Last Showgirl was the latest in string of carefully plotted projects for Anderson, the cumulative results of which effectively changed both the course of her career and how she was perceived by the public.
Momentum began when she made her acclaimed Broadway debut playing Roxie Hart in a production of Chicago in 2022. “I always knew I had more to give,” she said about making the transition to the stage. “And doing Broadway was something I had to do for my soul.”
That was followed by an Emmy-nominated documentary, Pamela, a Love Story, and auto-biography, Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth, both of which arrived in 2023.
Once considered a starlet, not unlike Marilyn Monroe, some of what made Anderson one of the most famous people on the planet during the 1990s was her glammed-up appearance. She eventually tired of the charade, and went viral in 2023 for appearing make-up free at Paris Fashion Week.
“I didn’t do it to make a statement. I did it authentically, so I think that’s why [people are gravitating to it.] I can’t be in a make-up chair for that long. Only this much of my face is sticking out of all these wonderful clothes, do I really need to spend this much time on it? Is anyone going to notice? No one’s even going to notice. People resonated with it, and I was so grateful. People around me were like, ‘No glam team? You can’t do that.’ Yes I can. That is some of my Canadian roots showing. I’m resilient.”
Her bravery, in that regard, inspired others in Hollywood to follow-suit. That narrative also plays into her character in The Last Showgirl, whose transformation has drawn real-life comparisons to Anderson. “There’s definitely parallels,” she said. “Everything is about my own personal life experience. I love it. There’s nothing better to express yourself. It’s a kind of therapy. I felt like I could breathe after I did this film.”
Anderson is thrilled that the movie is getting a theatrical release, beginning this weekend in sa国际传媒. Purpose-built camera lenses were used on the film, due to the amount of tight close-ups that were written into the script. And because Anderson is in almost every scene, that made for some heavy lifting on her part. “You can’t hide anything in the eyes. When I saw it for the first time, I thought ‘You can see what I’m thinking!’ I was very vulnerable and exposed.”
Now that audiences are aware of what she is capable of delivering, Anderson is proceeding with caution. The awards-season attention has given her pause, to be sure. But it also stirred her confidence. “I thought, ‘Gosh, maybe I’m onto something.’ Now, I need to dig into something else. I just want to keep learning. I’m happy that it’s resonating, those are clues you’re heading in the right direction. I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface.”
Part two, coming Saturday: Pamela Anderson stays connected to her Island roots, despite living in the Hollywood spotlight.
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