Pamela Anderson is opening up about how it was challenging for her young sons to see her “sexualized” by Hollywood as they were growing up.
“Being a working mom and being in this entertainment world and having your mom be sexualized in some way … a lot of the things I went through, I didn’t realize my kids were going through them at the same time,” the actor, 57, said in a new interview with fellow actor Mikey Madison for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series.
Anderson became a renowned sex symbol in the ’90s after skyrocketing to fame for her role in “Baywatch” as the blond bombshell who never failed to turn heads while running in slow motion in a red one-piece bathing suit.
Known for her regular appearances in Playboy magazine, she holds the record for gracing the most covers (13). The star also faced controversy after a sex tape with ex-husband and rock star Tommy Lee was stolen and distributed.
“The Last Showgirl” star, who is mom to sons Brandon, now 28, and Dylan, now 26, with Lee, admitted in the interview published Tuesday that she’s “not ashamed of the choices that I made.”
But Anderson said that “maybe in hindsight I would’ve done things differently.”
However, as she told Madison, everything worked out because “you need life experience to know that you would’ve done that differently.”
As far as parenting her sons now, she said she feels like she has “the freedom to focus on things instead of worrying about a relationship or my family” since they are adults now.
“My kids are grown. I’m free. Now I can play again,” the “Barb Wire” actor told Madison.
In an interview with Variety published Wednesday, Anderson’s son Brandon gushed about his mom’s “great shift” in her career from being “objectified” by the “male gaze” to gaining notice from female fans as a respected actor.
He credited the release of her 2023 memoir, “Love, Pamela,” and the Netflix documentary “Pamela, a Love Story” for that transition but insisted that her new film, “The Last Showgirl,” was what “pushed” audiences to truly see her acting chops.
“The category she was in before, she was just very objectified … her whole career was just positioned towards the male gaze,” Brandon, an Emmy-nominated producer, said. “And for us to see the shift after we laid all the cards out on the table was shocking to me.”
Her eldest son added, “I knew at that point that there was going to be this great shift in her career, because she was no longer this misunderstood or threatening personality.”
Explaining that “she wasn’t this sex symbol anymore” in those projects, Brandon declared, “She was a human being, and I think people were looking at her in a completely new light.”
He added: “And I feel like that kind of reintroduced her to the world. It feels like everyone’s rooting for her.”
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Watch a clip from Anderson’s “Actors on Actors” interview with Mikey Madison below.