How Pamela Anderson got her break in ‘The Last Showgirl’

Pamela Anderson has lived many a life over the decades — “Baywatch” babe, animal rights activist, international glamour symbol — and one of those lives brought her to Michigan. Anderson married Kid Rock four times in 2006 — in St. Tropez, Beverly Hills, Nashville, Tennessee, and Clarkston — before getting divorced, just once, in November of that year. It was a whirlwind time in a whirlwind era, but Anderson says she doesn’t look back in anger at her time spent in northern Oakland County with the “Cowboy” rocker, whom she first met in 2001.

“I only have fond memories of that time. It was really fun,” says Anderson, on the phone last month from Los Angeles. “It was a time and a place. It was a chapter in my life — it’s a different time now — but with some distance, you can look back and appreciate the good times.”

Those times included plenty of outdoors activities for Anderson and her two kids, Brandon and Dylan, now 28 and 27, respectively. “I remember a lot of snow when I was in Ortonville. I remember my sons on dirt bike tracks and hot rods, great family time and cooking, and hanging out with Hank Williams Jr.,” she says. “Bob (Ritchie, Rock’s real name) was always so great to my kids, and his family was so generous to me. It was an interesting time that I actually look back fondly on.”

Now Anderson has entered a new chapter with her role in “The Last Showgirl,” out Friday in theatres. The movie casts Anderson as a dancer at a shuttering Las Vegas revue, and the movie earned the actress a nomination for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture — drama at Sunday’s Golden Globes, the first major awards nomination she’s received in her career.

While she didn’t win — the statue went to “I’m Still Here’s” Fernanda Torres — it’s a reinvention for the 57-year-old, who these days is more likely to be growing pickles on her farm in Canada than she is traipsing a Hollywood red carpet. (She showed up makeup-free to the Globes ceremony.) It comes as Anderson has had time to look back and reflect on her life and legacy.

Anderson grew up in Ladysmith, British Columbia, outside of Vancouver, and she was famously discovered at a Canadian Football League game when she was spotted in the stands and featured on the stadium’s jumbotron. At 22, her first ride on an airplane brought her to Los Angeles and the Playboy Mansion, and by the time she was the magazine’s Playmate of the Month in February 1990, she was on her way to becoming the decade’s defining bombshell.

Recent years have seen a softening and a reconsideration of Anderson’s image in the media. She had a successful run playing Roxie Hart in Broadway’s “Chicago” in 2022, and in 2023 she starred in “Love, Pamela,” a Netflix documentary where she openly and honestly looked back at her life and her personal struggles, which coincided with the release of her autobiography of the same name.

All of those lives she has lived are rolled into “The Last Showgirl,” in which Anderson plays Shelly Gardner, a Vegas dancer who is desperately clinging to the last shimmer of glamour in a long faded show. She co-stars in the movie with Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista and Billie Lourd.

“The Last Showgirl” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and has been received warmly by critics. Anderson says she bonded with the cast and crew while making the film, and she first heard about her Golden Globe nomination on her “Last Showgirl” text thread. And no one is more thrilled than Anderson herself. She’s on the ride of her life, she says, and this time around, she gets to enjoy it. “It’s been a roller coaster, and this is the fun part,” she says with a giggle. “Woo!”

Tribune News Service