The actress opened up about her life and career during an appearance at the Zurich Film Festival in Switzerland, where she was honoured with the event’s Golden Eye Award.
However, the Baywatch icon revealed she barely remembers much of her life in the spotlight.
“I look at it now and it feels like I went from Baywatchto Broadway. I don’t know what happened in between, it’s all a big blur,” Anderson said at the festival, as reported by Variety.
“I am just happy to be here, in this moment, because I think I have had depression for a couple of decades.”
Pamela Anderson received the Special Jury Prize for The Last Showgirl at the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival on September 28, 2024. Photo / Getty Images
Anderson, 57, made her Broadway debut in 2022 playing Roxie Hart in Chicago for eight weeks. She has gone on to land a number of film roles, including The Last Showgirl, Rosebush Pruning, and a role in the Naked Gunreboot, which is due for release next year.
The star said she’s thrilled to be busy with work again and believes her 2023 Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, helped revive her career.
“That’s how Gia [Coppola, The Last Showgirl’s director] saw me. I always knew I was capable of more. It’s great to be a part of pop culture, but it’s a blessing and a curse. People fall in love with you because of a bathing suit. It has taken a long time, but I am here,” she added.
Anderson previously told Collider: “I think timing is everything. I thought I was never gonna get the chance to do anything like this.
“I kind of thought, ‘Oh, well, that’s what people think of me. I’m just gonna go back to my farm, make jam, and that’s it. I’ll figure out another way to make my life beautiful’.
“But the documentary came out, the book [her memoir, Love, Pamela] came out, and Gia saw the documentary. She must be some kind of master or prophet or something, but she was so wonderful to send the script to me, and I read it and I was like, ‘Oh God, this is that thing. This is that thing when people read a script and they really realise they’re the only ones that can do it. They have to do it. It’s life and death’.
“And I felt that way, and I get chills even thinking about it.”
In a profile for Glamour Magazinepublished last week, Anderson spoke candidly about entering a new chapter in her life and career, as well as revealing some heartbreaking truths about her turbulent relationship with herself over the decades.
The cover story marked Anderson being named as one of Glamour’s Global Women of the Year, an honour she received alongside tennis legend Serena Williams. Anderson attended the magazine’s Women of the Year Awards in London last week, just days after she was awarded the Special Jury Prize for The Last Showgirl at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
“You’re going to hit a crossroads in your 50s, and you go, ‘Am I going to chase youth? Am I going to be miserable? Or am I going to be self-accepting?’ And it’s a practice.”
