Beyond the Valley of the Doll - Details May 1996
Beyond the Valley of the Doll
Women are from Venus, Pamela Lee is from Mars.
David A. Keeps surveys the landscape of her mind.
Brandon Thomas Lee may be the luckiest little guy in the world. His father, the lucky guy who got to put him where he is today, has already ordered him a baby drum kit just like the one dad plays in Motley Crue. And his mother plans to breast-feed her son when he's born.
"It's so bizarre going through a pregnancy," Pamela Lee tells me. "Yesterday I was having a bath and milk started squirting out of my breasts. I called Tommy and I go, "They Work!" and he just lost it. And we had the ultrasound the other day and the doctor said, 'There's the scrotum and there's the penis.' I was very impressed. For a seven month old. "
It's the happiest time in her twenty-eight years, but it's rough. "When you're pregnant your .sex drive goes way through the roof. And your brain, it does get fried. Just this morning I'm like, did I take my vitamins or didn't I? Seven months' worth of brain cells are gone."
And another thing: "If you laugh really hard when you're pregnant, you pee your pants."
She arrives at Shutters in Santa Monica with Jon Roberts, her assistant and "food cop." First he approves her lunch: angel-hair pasta with tomato and basil and a salad with goat cheese. (She had calamari the other day big mistake. ) Then he puts four beepers on the table. Tommy might call.
The Lees were married on February 19, 1995, after a four day courtship in Cancun. The bride wore white. A bikini. When they returned to L.A. they got married again, this time in silver spacesuits. Pamela has hired a midwife and wants to have the baby in their new house, which is still under construction. "When I told Tommy I wanted to hang a swing above the piano, he's like, 'Let me find some studs in the roof so you don't fall on your ass.' He's really the practical one in the relationship." And she's the romantic. Last October, for his thirty-third birth day, Pamela had a dream and turned it into a theme party. She had everyone picked up in a tour bus and driven home in ambulances. There was a Ferris wheel and a drum kit made of junk for Tommy to play. Everyone was in drag and there were little people saying "Welcome to Tommy land" as the guests walked down a red carpet in slow motion. Tommy wore a flowing robe and a crown made of crystals. "He was the king of Tommy land, and I was the ringmaster with short shorts, fishnets, and a whip." Clearly, they're still crazy in love.
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How would you prepare to do a love scene?
(one of her four beepers goes off) That must be Tommy. You started mentioning love scenes and the panic button went off. (after a brief lovey-dovey conversation) You know what? I just don't think I could bring myself to do it. I'm sorry, but if someone is pinching my nipple, it's my body that I'm sharing in an intimate way. I couldn't make that separation. A normal married couple wouldn't let the wife go across the street and have sex and say, "Oh, I was just visiting."
Isn't that a kick in the ass? That's what everyone wants to see you do.
Well, I think the sexiest moments aren't necessarily two people *******. Excuse my language. (laughs) Like the one in Fatal Attraction when she's falling in the sink and he's tripping over his pants. I think what makes people sexy is their sense of humor, their realness, their kind of stumbling human qualities.
What's the dumbest pickup line you've ever heard?
(long pause) I can't think of any. Maybe they all work with me.
Do you like being one of the most desired women in the world?
Now how do you answer that without sounding like a total jerk? And ya know, there's a little scariness that comes along with it, like when I get a letter addressed "Pamela Anderson, Movie Star" And it's in my mailbox, from Germany.
Do you ever wish that you were ugly but a great actress?
No. (laughs). . . I still go to work every day thinking I'm not cut out for this. I have a phobia: I can't watch myself on TV. I start shaking, I start sweating and I lose it.
Being beautiful, do you have to try harder as an actress?
I don't. (laughs) I mean, I do as well as I can, but I'm not doing Masterpiece Theatre. I'm just having fun with it. I think that's what TV should be about anyway. I look at I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch it was terrible television, but it was like easy watching. It wasn't like a lot of really in depth actors reaching into their childhood and remembering when their dog was run over
What's your first childhood memory?
Doing something bad. I was a three-o'clock-in-the-morning-nightmare child. My mother keeps telling me these terrible stories now that I'm having a baby. Like when she was gonna bake a pie and I smeared the cat in all her spices and butter and stuck him in the oven and went back to bed. Psycho. Or I would hide my brother in a barrel and then alert the whole town that he was missing.
When were you aware that you were becoming a woman?
Well, I got one nipple first. See, you wouldn't know this but they pop out, and they're like little hard things. I would run around screaming, just trying to pound it back into my chest. Then a month later I sat my mother down, crying, and I said, "Okay, I have to tell you that I'm dying of cancer." And then another month later the other one came out.
And now look at you. A perfect match. What did your mom say when Playboy called you?
My mom is super cool. She goes, "I would do it, if they asked me." She even went to the mansion a couple times and Hef told her she had nice legs.
Raquel Welch said being a sex symbol isn't as easy as it looks because you don't get a lot of sympathy.
But that's also in your favor because they're pleasantly surprised that you can hold a conversation. . . . I always felt like, the more open and honest and candid I can be, even in interviews, the better. If people don't accept you for yourself, then they should probably just turn the channel.
Does it bother you that you're criticized for having plastic surgery?
I've had one surgery, a breast augmentation, and a million other people have, but it's horrifying that I actually did. People will always find something. I don't understand why it's such a big deal, this is what I want to look like.
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This is what she looks like: Cute. Tan with freckles, big eyes, and blond hair everywhere. (If she were a lapdog, she'd be a Pekingese.) She is the kind of woman that men like to put on a pedestal, mainly so they can look up her skirt, but she is more the girl-next-door than the inflatable sex goddess. She's put on some makeup ("I just kind of futz around"), but not the full war paint you might expect. The effect is disarmingly real. As we talk, Pamela tosses her hair around and laughs hysterically. She is not the poised, sincere young actress whose every utterance whispers "Respect me.'' Her attitude is more "Oh, the hell with it, let's party. " She's just one of the guys. She raves about Alanis Morissette and Nine Inch Nails ("They want to **** me like an animal," she giggles). She speaks with all the bouncy cool-rad-ya know-awesome enthusiasm of a beach babe, which only emphasizes her quirky, quick witted one-liners.
The prevailing theory; that Pamela Lee is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, misses the mark. She is smarter than she needs to be. Smart enough to steal the show (in the tradition of Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot) at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival by showing up to promote her role as a butt-kickin' uber-babe in Barb Wire, even though she hadn't shot a single scene. And she reads a lot. Robert Bly, Kahlil Gibran, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes, even though they can be scary: "Bye-bye black sheep," she recites, "going to stuff you in a bag and suffocate you." Sometimes things do get lost in the translation, though. Vanity Fair called her "a timeless beauty who has done everything in her power to become a transient one." "Yeah, well, 'transient' means someone who lives in hotels," she tells me, "and I'm a home body." But hers is a particular kind of intelligence, one that accepts without shame what she has become and uses what she knows to mess with people's minds. Once, trying to kill time on her exercise bike, she memorized some Hamlet. That came in handy when some snide announcer on a stupid TV special said, "Oh, Pamela's going to recite something from Shakespeare." She performed the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, "and their mouths just dropped."
Pamela Denise Anderson was born on July 1, 1967, To teenage parents, Barry and Carol, in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Prophetically, she had her picture on the front page of the local paper when she was born because she was the area's first baby of the Canadian centennial. The family struggled. Mom was a waitress. (In her teens, Pamela worked with her at Smitty's pancake house.) Dad owned Barry's Furnace Service. "He had the name in big letters on the side of this big hillbilly wagon. When he drove me to school I made sure he dropped me off two blocks before I got there. " She was kind of hyper, digging holes to China in the yard with her mother's spoons. "I fainted a lot," she recalls. "I still do. I just don't have that shutoff valve." She didn't have Barbie's, but she had a stuffed alligator she loved. This is her toy story: "I don't know why, but I wrote TIGGER on his ear. And I blackened in all his teeth with Magic Marker. There was a dryer vent in the garage with a hole in it and I couldn't find Tigger for the longest time and I looked up there and my dad had (laughs hysterically) just stuffed him there. He said, 'It's too late now!' (still laughing) And I've never been the same since then." In kindergarten she had a crush on Donald, the boy with the biggest ears in the class. When she was ten or eleven, she succumbed to peer pressure and tried to shoplift Bonne Bell bubble-gum lip gloss; they collared her at the door. Though she never had teen idol posters on her walls, she had this thing for Staying Alive. "It was like my meter If a boy came over and didn't like this one particular scene, I used to go, 'Phhht there's the door.' " She was a straight-A student and went to the prom. "It's not really like a prom in Canada. Everyone just went out all night to the beach and got wasted." Pamela loved her father's father. Grandpa used to give her books and tell her "You are your empire, your body is your temple." He taught her to meditate. "He used to say when things were crazy at home, go to the beach and take a rock and really become the rock. I mean, it sounds kind of kooky, but it really helped me through a lot when I was little." He died when she was eleven. Pamela didn't go to the funeral; she's never been to one since. But he left her a legacy. He encouraged his granddaughter to keep a record of and, more importantly, to live her dreams. I encourage her to tell me a dream. This is what she says: I dreamt that Tommy was taking me to Ronald Reagan's birthday party. We're all dressed up and pack all the baby things into the truck. When we get there we get everything out of the truck and there's Ronald Reagan and then there's four rows of kids, like four by four. There's a poodle in every row spaced between the kids on the diagonal. And they were all line-dancing. I'm sit ting there watching the entertainment, and Tommy goes, "I'll be right hack, I'm gonna go find a girl that looks like you." So he leaves. I zoom in on Ronald Reagan and realize it's an impersonator. Oh my God, he's left me in a mental institution with all my baby stuff. So I go running outside and I see four rows of women naked from the waist down praying to Buddha. I go, "Excuse me, is there any way I can get a cab here?" And they go, "Well, the men's cabs go to the right and the women's to the left and there's no cabs going to the left, so I think women can 't get a cab today. " So I go inside and there's Anna Nicole Smith on an IV. I go, "Do you need me to break you out of here? " And she goes, "I can't. I 'm a ward of the state. " So I'm like, Oh my God, I really am in a mental institution. I go outside again and I see this really tiny Lego car coming up to me. I'm trying to open the door really carefully 'cause I don't want to break it, and I'm trying to get in and my stomach's way too big. I look inside and there's Tommy in the front, and he goes, "I'm gonna break you out of here! Ya know what, I didn't really wanna find a girl that looks like you. I just wanted to go party with my friends for a while come on, get in. " And then I woke up. "Maybe," Pamela tells me, "if you just print my dream, people will know everything they need to know about me. I don't want to try to analyze it. If I see someone try to analyze this dream in this article, I'm gonna be frightened." I don't normally like to frighten people, but I do fax her dream off to be interpreted.
Unaware of Pamela's identity, Dr. Tore A. Nielsen, director of the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory, Hospital du Sacre-Coeur, Montreal, writes:
Beneath this dreamer's creative tapestry of surrealistic episodes is a reasonably coherent story about the inner concerns and fears (dependency, insecurity, abandonment, confinement) of a woman expecting a child. "naked from the waist down praying" could refer to end less gynecological exams or perhaps the birth miracle itself. During pregnancy the body changes; the way she worries about her "way-too-big stomach breaking the little Lego car" is a particularly enchanting mix of structural uncertainty and kid symbolism. If much of this seems obvious, the dream is never the less riddled with enigmatic symbols, many of which suggest a very creative and humorous spirit. Why Ronald Reagan's birth day, for God's sake? And that weird matrix of dancing kiddies and poodles what could that be about? Does she own a dog? A Jungian specialist might find it to be a serene, symmetric, and well-balanced symbol of the self, a sign of individuation through procreation. But we would need to hear from the dreamer herself.
Later, I confess to Pamela that I had her dream analyzed. She gasps, "What did the doctor say? 'Lock her up'?" So I read her the good doctor's notes. "I have three dogs," she says afterward, "two Rottweilers and a golden retriever. Maybe I want a poodle. And my mother dreamed of dancing cows once, so maybe it's a hereditary dancing-animal thing."
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Are all men dogs?
No. I think a lot of women are. Women grow up with the theory that keeping secrets is good. I mean, your mother from the very beginning doesn't tell your father everything, and she makes sure you don't tell your father everything. I'm not the game-playing type. I think a man should be your best friend.
What makes a man sexy?
Imagination. Someone who's uninhibited and very secure with their body. And walks around naked all the time.
Was sex ever scary to you?
Mmm, no. If you play burglar-victim, it can be. (laughs)
Is there anything that would turn you off?
Yeah, abusive situations.
What will you tell your son about sex?
Well, I believe sex education should be taught in school, and I think that you should be approachable parents. If kids see their parents are very loving people and kissing and hugging and they know that sex is hopefully in combination with love, then they'll get the right idea. If you set a good example . . . you know, like swinging from trapezes.
What if he came to you when he was sixteen and said he was gay?
Then that's what he would be and he could wear my clothes if he wanted. We'd probably already have a couple shoes in the closet in his size.
Does size count? Hey, it's the sex issue. Men need to know.
Unfortunately, yes it does!. There's a lot of ways to make people feel good, but personally I think it does enhance things.
What do women want from men?
A great companion. A man that's a man. You don't want to have to be the man and the woman in the relationship. I always say you want a man who can fix the toilet.
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She's the queen of the tabloids, but it's a love-hate thing.
(They love her; she hates them.) They speculate over every pound she gains or loses. (Today, at seven months, she's seventeen pounds heavier than her Baywatch weight.) They spy on her whenever she's in the hospital. They dig up so-called old friends and lovers to dish the dirt. They tell stories about drugs, jealousy, fights.
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Do you have to harden your heart when you become famous?
I hope not. I don't care how many times I get trampled on or how many times I get beat up, because I don't want to be one of those guarded, living-in-my-shell kind of people. I'd rather keep on getting hurt.
Which untrue tabloid story about you do you wish was actually true?
Oh, there's so many untrue stories. Let's see . . . That I really was the heroin poster girl. No, just kidding. That was a terrible story. There was a lawsuit over it that I'm not allowed to talk about. People think we have this really crazy rock 'n' roll lifestyle. But we wake up at seven and go to the gym every morning together. Tommy's been working out like crazy. He's gained twenty-eight pounds. I told him, "You're ruining your image. I think everybody should just believe you're a heroin addict, it's probably better for your career."
Did you ever experiment with drugs?
I was not a big drug person. I couldn't smoke pot because it made me so paranoid that I couldn't tell if I had to pee or I was really cold, so I just didn't enjoy it. I don't think there's other substances that really work with my personality.
What about Cristal champagne? That's what all the papers say.
Yeah, well, I guess that's the only drink anyone's ever seen in my hand. One night at Bo Kaos I had a few glasses of Cristal and I did a back flip in the booth. I landed on Tommy, and his drink went down my patent-leather pants. So I stand up and I've got my hand in my crotch, trying to get the ice cubes out. And that's when Tommy said, "I think I'm going to take my wife home now." Things like that usually happen if I drink champagne.
What about those pictures of you two having sex that were published in Screw?
I was devastated at first. Someone stole our pictures, I wanted to frame them, you know. (laughs) I just refuse to dwell on it in a negative way. Ooh, I'm having sex with my husband, like that's a real terrible thing. I think lots of people take those kinds of pictures. At least we took a Polaroid, we didn't take it to Supersnaps.
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There's this twisted dark side of me that's really fun to explore with this character because she just goes off at any moment." That's Pamela's sound bite for Barb Wire. Today, she goes a little further: "But I feel that way too. If anyone were to hurt my family, ya know, I'm not gonna think 'lawsuit first,' I'll probably think 'kill first.' "
Pamela Lee has not joined the chorus of tearful celebrities who heal their hurts in public. She tried it and both she and her parents got hurt. Last year a British tabloid quoted her as saying, "Recently I talked about the abuse I suffered as a child. I did this in the hope that other people going through the situation were not alone.... I didn't , do it to hurt anyone. Unfortunately the reports were completely sensationalized." Perhaps if she did get in touch with those feelings, people might begin to think she was a more serious actress and she might even become one but the process would almost certainly make her a less enchanting and delightful person. The fact is, she's survived it and can laugh about those things now. Maybe it's better that way.
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Your father reportedly had a drinking problem which is now under control. What was it like growing up with that?
Well, it wasn't fun at times, but if anybody was passed out on the porch when I came home, me and my friends used to flick rocks at their head and try to hit them, we kinda made a game out of it. No, I'm kidding. It was tough.
I read a story that said you hit your dad.
I punched my dad once. I punched him in the chin and I hit him pretty hard and then I ran for my life. It was just one of those situations where there was drinking involved and I don't really want to get into all that. My father's drinking problem is old news. But yeah, I was pretty ballsy as a kid. When my mom was crying in the bathroom and my brother was downstairs scared behind a locked door, I was the one who was yelling at my dad and then running for the door.
What did it teach you about life? I look back and I really respect my mom. My parents had me when they were seventeen and nineteen. And I think back to when I was that age and think, God! Anybody can have a child. Whether you're financially secure or emotionally secure or not. Money was always such a huge issue growing up. It was always like, If we only had this, then we'd have no problems, when really that isn't the case. Ya know what, though? It was tough growing up, but we all got through it and everyone is fine now and everyone gets along well. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
That's mighty Nietzschean. Are you also an existentialist?
Like not an astrological, crystals, and incense kind of thing?
No, that's New Agey. Existential is like, If a tree falls in the forest...
That's really weird you said that, because my grandfather was a logger, and they tell me he talked to the trees, and the trees talked to him, and he used to always say that if a tree falls in the forest, it doesn't make a sound. I kind of do have that belief then, because I do have that faith that things are going to happen the way they're going to happen, and they're out of your control.
When was the last time you told a lie?
(laughs) Probably sometime in this conversation.
What do you think people most misunderstand about you?
There are things that they probably would never understand unless they got to know me, so that's just the way it's going to be. There's never going to be a great understanding of me. I think I'm a little whacked. It's just as well.
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Outside, the sun is dipping into the Pacific. Everything is glowing and golden. It's a Baywatch moment. Time for some Baywatch questions.
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Which one of David Hasselhoff's records do you treasure the most?
I haven't heard any of his CD's.
I heard he gave people tapes of his album as Christmas presents.
I don't think I was there for that one, but I did get a calendar one year. A David Hasselhoff calendar I have never met anyone who loves the business so much. He loves signing autographs, he loves the paparazzi, he loves people screaming his name, he loves wearing a big purple suit with a cape in London, walking in the Hard Rock Cafe. He's just full-blown David Hasselhoff to the max.
Swimming in that ocean out there is pretty gross, isn't it?
Sometimes. We do location swimming. But whenever you come out of the water they give you eye drops, ear drops, and you gargle with Listerine and hose yourself off, so nothing really sticks to you.
How many miles of that beach out there do you think you've run?
In slow motion or at normal speed?
Women are from Venus, Pamela Lee is from Mars.
David A. Keeps surveys the landscape of her mind.
Brandon Thomas Lee may be the luckiest little guy in the world. His father, the lucky guy who got to put him where he is today, has already ordered him a baby drum kit just like the one dad plays in Motley Crue. And his mother plans to breast-feed her son when he's born.
"It's so bizarre going through a pregnancy," Pamela Lee tells me. "Yesterday I was having a bath and milk started squirting out of my breasts. I called Tommy and I go, "They Work!" and he just lost it. And we had the ultrasound the other day and the doctor said, 'There's the scrotum and there's the penis.' I was very impressed. For a seven month old. "
It's the happiest time in her twenty-eight years, but it's rough. "When you're pregnant your .sex drive goes way through the roof. And your brain, it does get fried. Just this morning I'm like, did I take my vitamins or didn't I? Seven months' worth of brain cells are gone."
And another thing: "If you laugh really hard when you're pregnant, you pee your pants."
She arrives at Shutters in Santa Monica with Jon Roberts, her assistant and "food cop." First he approves her lunch: angel-hair pasta with tomato and basil and a salad with goat cheese. (She had calamari the other day big mistake. ) Then he puts four beepers on the table. Tommy might call.
The Lees were married on February 19, 1995, after a four day courtship in Cancun. The bride wore white. A bikini. When they returned to L.A. they got married again, this time in silver spacesuits. Pamela has hired a midwife and wants to have the baby in their new house, which is still under construction. "When I told Tommy I wanted to hang a swing above the piano, he's like, 'Let me find some studs in the roof so you don't fall on your ass.' He's really the practical one in the relationship." And she's the romantic. Last October, for his thirty-third birth day, Pamela had a dream and turned it into a theme party. She had everyone picked up in a tour bus and driven home in ambulances. There was a Ferris wheel and a drum kit made of junk for Tommy to play. Everyone was in drag and there were little people saying "Welcome to Tommy land" as the guests walked down a red carpet in slow motion. Tommy wore a flowing robe and a crown made of crystals. "He was the king of Tommy land, and I was the ringmaster with short shorts, fishnets, and a whip." Clearly, they're still crazy in love.
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How would you prepare to do a love scene?
(one of her four beepers goes off) That must be Tommy. You started mentioning love scenes and the panic button went off. (after a brief lovey-dovey conversation) You know what? I just don't think I could bring myself to do it. I'm sorry, but if someone is pinching my nipple, it's my body that I'm sharing in an intimate way. I couldn't make that separation. A normal married couple wouldn't let the wife go across the street and have sex and say, "Oh, I was just visiting."
Isn't that a kick in the ass? That's what everyone wants to see you do.
Well, I think the sexiest moments aren't necessarily two people *******. Excuse my language. (laughs) Like the one in Fatal Attraction when she's falling in the sink and he's tripping over his pants. I think what makes people sexy is their sense of humor, their realness, their kind of stumbling human qualities.
What's the dumbest pickup line you've ever heard?
(long pause) I can't think of any. Maybe they all work with me.
Do you like being one of the most desired women in the world?
Now how do you answer that without sounding like a total jerk? And ya know, there's a little scariness that comes along with it, like when I get a letter addressed "Pamela Anderson, Movie Star" And it's in my mailbox, from Germany.
Do you ever wish that you were ugly but a great actress?
No. (laughs). . . I still go to work every day thinking I'm not cut out for this. I have a phobia: I can't watch myself on TV. I start shaking, I start sweating and I lose it.
Being beautiful, do you have to try harder as an actress?
I don't. (laughs) I mean, I do as well as I can, but I'm not doing Masterpiece Theatre. I'm just having fun with it. I think that's what TV should be about anyway. I look at I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch it was terrible television, but it was like easy watching. It wasn't like a lot of really in depth actors reaching into their childhood and remembering when their dog was run over
What's your first childhood memory?
Doing something bad. I was a three-o'clock-in-the-morning-nightmare child. My mother keeps telling me these terrible stories now that I'm having a baby. Like when she was gonna bake a pie and I smeared the cat in all her spices and butter and stuck him in the oven and went back to bed. Psycho. Or I would hide my brother in a barrel and then alert the whole town that he was missing.
When were you aware that you were becoming a woman?
Well, I got one nipple first. See, you wouldn't know this but they pop out, and they're like little hard things. I would run around screaming, just trying to pound it back into my chest. Then a month later I sat my mother down, crying, and I said, "Okay, I have to tell you that I'm dying of cancer." And then another month later the other one came out.
And now look at you. A perfect match. What did your mom say when Playboy called you?
My mom is super cool. She goes, "I would do it, if they asked me." She even went to the mansion a couple times and Hef told her she had nice legs.
Raquel Welch said being a sex symbol isn't as easy as it looks because you don't get a lot of sympathy.
But that's also in your favor because they're pleasantly surprised that you can hold a conversation. . . . I always felt like, the more open and honest and candid I can be, even in interviews, the better. If people don't accept you for yourself, then they should probably just turn the channel.
Does it bother you that you're criticized for having plastic surgery?
I've had one surgery, a breast augmentation, and a million other people have, but it's horrifying that I actually did. People will always find something. I don't understand why it's such a big deal, this is what I want to look like.
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This is what she looks like: Cute. Tan with freckles, big eyes, and blond hair everywhere. (If she were a lapdog, she'd be a Pekingese.) She is the kind of woman that men like to put on a pedestal, mainly so they can look up her skirt, but she is more the girl-next-door than the inflatable sex goddess. She's put on some makeup ("I just kind of futz around"), but not the full war paint you might expect. The effect is disarmingly real. As we talk, Pamela tosses her hair around and laughs hysterically. She is not the poised, sincere young actress whose every utterance whispers "Respect me.'' Her attitude is more "Oh, the hell with it, let's party. " She's just one of the guys. She raves about Alanis Morissette and Nine Inch Nails ("They want to **** me like an animal," she giggles). She speaks with all the bouncy cool-rad-ya know-awesome enthusiasm of a beach babe, which only emphasizes her quirky, quick witted one-liners.
The prevailing theory; that Pamela Lee is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, misses the mark. She is smarter than she needs to be. Smart enough to steal the show (in the tradition of Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot) at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival by showing up to promote her role as a butt-kickin' uber-babe in Barb Wire, even though she hadn't shot a single scene. And she reads a lot. Robert Bly, Kahlil Gibran, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes, even though they can be scary: "Bye-bye black sheep," she recites, "going to stuff you in a bag and suffocate you." Sometimes things do get lost in the translation, though. Vanity Fair called her "a timeless beauty who has done everything in her power to become a transient one." "Yeah, well, 'transient' means someone who lives in hotels," she tells me, "and I'm a home body." But hers is a particular kind of intelligence, one that accepts without shame what she has become and uses what she knows to mess with people's minds. Once, trying to kill time on her exercise bike, she memorized some Hamlet. That came in handy when some snide announcer on a stupid TV special said, "Oh, Pamela's going to recite something from Shakespeare." She performed the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, "and their mouths just dropped."
Pamela Denise Anderson was born on July 1, 1967, To teenage parents, Barry and Carol, in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Prophetically, she had her picture on the front page of the local paper when she was born because she was the area's first baby of the Canadian centennial. The family struggled. Mom was a waitress. (In her teens, Pamela worked with her at Smitty's pancake house.) Dad owned Barry's Furnace Service. "He had the name in big letters on the side of this big hillbilly wagon. When he drove me to school I made sure he dropped me off two blocks before I got there. " She was kind of hyper, digging holes to China in the yard with her mother's spoons. "I fainted a lot," she recalls. "I still do. I just don't have that shutoff valve." She didn't have Barbie's, but she had a stuffed alligator she loved. This is her toy story: "I don't know why, but I wrote TIGGER on his ear. And I blackened in all his teeth with Magic Marker. There was a dryer vent in the garage with a hole in it and I couldn't find Tigger for the longest time and I looked up there and my dad had (laughs hysterically) just stuffed him there. He said, 'It's too late now!' (still laughing) And I've never been the same since then." In kindergarten she had a crush on Donald, the boy with the biggest ears in the class. When she was ten or eleven, she succumbed to peer pressure and tried to shoplift Bonne Bell bubble-gum lip gloss; they collared her at the door. Though she never had teen idol posters on her walls, she had this thing for Staying Alive. "It was like my meter If a boy came over and didn't like this one particular scene, I used to go, 'Phhht there's the door.' " She was a straight-A student and went to the prom. "It's not really like a prom in Canada. Everyone just went out all night to the beach and got wasted." Pamela loved her father's father. Grandpa used to give her books and tell her "You are your empire, your body is your temple." He taught her to meditate. "He used to say when things were crazy at home, go to the beach and take a rock and really become the rock. I mean, it sounds kind of kooky, but it really helped me through a lot when I was little." He died when she was eleven. Pamela didn't go to the funeral; she's never been to one since. But he left her a legacy. He encouraged his granddaughter to keep a record of and, more importantly, to live her dreams. I encourage her to tell me a dream. This is what she says: I dreamt that Tommy was taking me to Ronald Reagan's birthday party. We're all dressed up and pack all the baby things into the truck. When we get there we get everything out of the truck and there's Ronald Reagan and then there's four rows of kids, like four by four. There's a poodle in every row spaced between the kids on the diagonal. And they were all line-dancing. I'm sit ting there watching the entertainment, and Tommy goes, "I'll be right hack, I'm gonna go find a girl that looks like you." So he leaves. I zoom in on Ronald Reagan and realize it's an impersonator. Oh my God, he's left me in a mental institution with all my baby stuff. So I go running outside and I see four rows of women naked from the waist down praying to Buddha. I go, "Excuse me, is there any way I can get a cab here?" And they go, "Well, the men's cabs go to the right and the women's to the left and there's no cabs going to the left, so I think women can 't get a cab today. " So I go inside and there's Anna Nicole Smith on an IV. I go, "Do you need me to break you out of here? " And she goes, "I can't. I 'm a ward of the state. " So I'm like, Oh my God, I really am in a mental institution. I go outside again and I see this really tiny Lego car coming up to me. I'm trying to open the door really carefully 'cause I don't want to break it, and I'm trying to get in and my stomach's way too big. I look inside and there's Tommy in the front, and he goes, "I'm gonna break you out of here! Ya know what, I didn't really wanna find a girl that looks like you. I just wanted to go party with my friends for a while come on, get in. " And then I woke up. "Maybe," Pamela tells me, "if you just print my dream, people will know everything they need to know about me. I don't want to try to analyze it. If I see someone try to analyze this dream in this article, I'm gonna be frightened." I don't normally like to frighten people, but I do fax her dream off to be interpreted.
Unaware of Pamela's identity, Dr. Tore A. Nielsen, director of the Dream & Nightmare Laboratory, Hospital du Sacre-Coeur, Montreal, writes:
Beneath this dreamer's creative tapestry of surrealistic episodes is a reasonably coherent story about the inner concerns and fears (dependency, insecurity, abandonment, confinement) of a woman expecting a child. "naked from the waist down praying" could refer to end less gynecological exams or perhaps the birth miracle itself. During pregnancy the body changes; the way she worries about her "way-too-big stomach breaking the little Lego car" is a particularly enchanting mix of structural uncertainty and kid symbolism. If much of this seems obvious, the dream is never the less riddled with enigmatic symbols, many of which suggest a very creative and humorous spirit. Why Ronald Reagan's birth day, for God's sake? And that weird matrix of dancing kiddies and poodles what could that be about? Does she own a dog? A Jungian specialist might find it to be a serene, symmetric, and well-balanced symbol of the self, a sign of individuation through procreation. But we would need to hear from the dreamer herself.
Later, I confess to Pamela that I had her dream analyzed. She gasps, "What did the doctor say? 'Lock her up'?" So I read her the good doctor's notes. "I have three dogs," she says afterward, "two Rottweilers and a golden retriever. Maybe I want a poodle. And my mother dreamed of dancing cows once, so maybe it's a hereditary dancing-animal thing."
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Are all men dogs?
No. I think a lot of women are. Women grow up with the theory that keeping secrets is good. I mean, your mother from the very beginning doesn't tell your father everything, and she makes sure you don't tell your father everything. I'm not the game-playing type. I think a man should be your best friend.
What makes a man sexy?
Imagination. Someone who's uninhibited and very secure with their body. And walks around naked all the time.
Was sex ever scary to you?
Mmm, no. If you play burglar-victim, it can be. (laughs)
Is there anything that would turn you off?
Yeah, abusive situations.
What will you tell your son about sex?
Well, I believe sex education should be taught in school, and I think that you should be approachable parents. If kids see their parents are very loving people and kissing and hugging and they know that sex is hopefully in combination with love, then they'll get the right idea. If you set a good example . . . you know, like swinging from trapezes.
What if he came to you when he was sixteen and said he was gay?
Then that's what he would be and he could wear my clothes if he wanted. We'd probably already have a couple shoes in the closet in his size.
Does size count? Hey, it's the sex issue. Men need to know.
Unfortunately, yes it does!. There's a lot of ways to make people feel good, but personally I think it does enhance things.
What do women want from men?
A great companion. A man that's a man. You don't want to have to be the man and the woman in the relationship. I always say you want a man who can fix the toilet.
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She's the queen of the tabloids, but it's a love-hate thing.
(They love her; she hates them.) They speculate over every pound she gains or loses. (Today, at seven months, she's seventeen pounds heavier than her Baywatch weight.) They spy on her whenever she's in the hospital. They dig up so-called old friends and lovers to dish the dirt. They tell stories about drugs, jealousy, fights.
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Do you have to harden your heart when you become famous?
I hope not. I don't care how many times I get trampled on or how many times I get beat up, because I don't want to be one of those guarded, living-in-my-shell kind of people. I'd rather keep on getting hurt.
Which untrue tabloid story about you do you wish was actually true?
Oh, there's so many untrue stories. Let's see . . . That I really was the heroin poster girl. No, just kidding. That was a terrible story. There was a lawsuit over it that I'm not allowed to talk about. People think we have this really crazy rock 'n' roll lifestyle. But we wake up at seven and go to the gym every morning together. Tommy's been working out like crazy. He's gained twenty-eight pounds. I told him, "You're ruining your image. I think everybody should just believe you're a heroin addict, it's probably better for your career."
Did you ever experiment with drugs?
I was not a big drug person. I couldn't smoke pot because it made me so paranoid that I couldn't tell if I had to pee or I was really cold, so I just didn't enjoy it. I don't think there's other substances that really work with my personality.
What about Cristal champagne? That's what all the papers say.
Yeah, well, I guess that's the only drink anyone's ever seen in my hand. One night at Bo Kaos I had a few glasses of Cristal and I did a back flip in the booth. I landed on Tommy, and his drink went down my patent-leather pants. So I stand up and I've got my hand in my crotch, trying to get the ice cubes out. And that's when Tommy said, "I think I'm going to take my wife home now." Things like that usually happen if I drink champagne.
What about those pictures of you two having sex that were published in Screw?
I was devastated at first. Someone stole our pictures, I wanted to frame them, you know. (laughs) I just refuse to dwell on it in a negative way. Ooh, I'm having sex with my husband, like that's a real terrible thing. I think lots of people take those kinds of pictures. At least we took a Polaroid, we didn't take it to Supersnaps.
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There's this twisted dark side of me that's really fun to explore with this character because she just goes off at any moment." That's Pamela's sound bite for Barb Wire. Today, she goes a little further: "But I feel that way too. If anyone were to hurt my family, ya know, I'm not gonna think 'lawsuit first,' I'll probably think 'kill first.' "
Pamela Lee has not joined the chorus of tearful celebrities who heal their hurts in public. She tried it and both she and her parents got hurt. Last year a British tabloid quoted her as saying, "Recently I talked about the abuse I suffered as a child. I did this in the hope that other people going through the situation were not alone.... I didn't , do it to hurt anyone. Unfortunately the reports were completely sensationalized." Perhaps if she did get in touch with those feelings, people might begin to think she was a more serious actress and she might even become one but the process would almost certainly make her a less enchanting and delightful person. The fact is, she's survived it and can laugh about those things now. Maybe it's better that way.
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Your father reportedly had a drinking problem which is now under control. What was it like growing up with that?
Well, it wasn't fun at times, but if anybody was passed out on the porch when I came home, me and my friends used to flick rocks at their head and try to hit them, we kinda made a game out of it. No, I'm kidding. It was tough.
I read a story that said you hit your dad.
I punched my dad once. I punched him in the chin and I hit him pretty hard and then I ran for my life. It was just one of those situations where there was drinking involved and I don't really want to get into all that. My father's drinking problem is old news. But yeah, I was pretty ballsy as a kid. When my mom was crying in the bathroom and my brother was downstairs scared behind a locked door, I was the one who was yelling at my dad and then running for the door.
What did it teach you about life? I look back and I really respect my mom. My parents had me when they were seventeen and nineteen. And I think back to when I was that age and think, God! Anybody can have a child. Whether you're financially secure or emotionally secure or not. Money was always such a huge issue growing up. It was always like, If we only had this, then we'd have no problems, when really that isn't the case. Ya know what, though? It was tough growing up, but we all got through it and everyone is fine now and everyone gets along well. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
That's mighty Nietzschean. Are you also an existentialist?
Like not an astrological, crystals, and incense kind of thing?
No, that's New Agey. Existential is like, If a tree falls in the forest...
That's really weird you said that, because my grandfather was a logger, and they tell me he talked to the trees, and the trees talked to him, and he used to always say that if a tree falls in the forest, it doesn't make a sound. I kind of do have that belief then, because I do have that faith that things are going to happen the way they're going to happen, and they're out of your control.
When was the last time you told a lie?
(laughs) Probably sometime in this conversation.
What do you think people most misunderstand about you?
There are things that they probably would never understand unless they got to know me, so that's just the way it's going to be. There's never going to be a great understanding of me. I think I'm a little whacked. It's just as well.
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Outside, the sun is dipping into the Pacific. Everything is glowing and golden. It's a Baywatch moment. Time for some Baywatch questions.
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Which one of David Hasselhoff's records do you treasure the most?
I haven't heard any of his CD's.
I heard he gave people tapes of his album as Christmas presents.
I don't think I was there for that one, but I did get a calendar one year. A David Hasselhoff calendar I have never met anyone who loves the business so much. He loves signing autographs, he loves the paparazzi, he loves people screaming his name, he loves wearing a big purple suit with a cape in London, walking in the Hard Rock Cafe. He's just full-blown David Hasselhoff to the max.
Swimming in that ocean out there is pretty gross, isn't it?
Sometimes. We do location swimming. But whenever you come out of the water they give you eye drops, ear drops, and you gargle with Listerine and hose yourself off, so nothing really sticks to you.
How many miles of that beach out there do you think you've run?
In slow motion or at normal speed?
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