After reinventing her career with The Last Showgirl, Pamela Anderson finally recognizes herself
‘I think my career has just started,’ the Canadian-born actor says in a Q interview
"I've always known I was capable of more," Pamela Anderson repeats several times throughout her conversation with Q's Tom Power. "Sometimes when you think it's the end, it's really the beginning."
For decades, Anderson has been recognized as a sex symbol and pop culture icon, but now, at 57, she's established herself as a serious dramatic actor and bonafide artist. Earlier this month, the Canadian-born actor and model earned her first Golden Globe nomination for her critically acclaimed performance as a fading Las Vegas showgirl in Gia Coppola's new film, The Last Showgirl.
"I think my career has just started," Anderson says. "I always have said, 'I'll recognize myself when I'm older.' I don't know, I had that in my head since, you know, five or six years old.… Here I am, 50 years later, and I recognize myself."
In a 2023 interview with Power, around the time she released a memoir and documentary about her life, Anderson talked about reclaiming her story after enduring years of harassment, humiliation and violations of her privacy. Often, the media treated her like a joke.
"Being a part of pop culture, I say, is a blessing and it also has its downsides because you kind of start at a deficit," she says. "It's a great compliment to be remembered for either the red bathing suit or all these kind of fun fashion moments that turn into Halloween costumes, but I knew I was capable of more than that."
The Last Showgirl follows Anderson as Shelly, a seasoned Las Vegas performer who's faced with an uncertain future after learning her long-running show will abruptly close. After watching her documentary in 2023, Coppola sent the script to Anderson's then-agent, who turned it down within the hour. The director then reached out to Anderson's son Brandon who passed it along to his mother.
Upon receiving the script, Anderson says she felt a lot of empathy for the character, whom she immediately connected with. Though the film isn't autobiographical in any way, she says she brought a lot of herself to the role.
"It was an experiment of all these things that I've learned in my career and lifetime," Anderson tells Power. "I just realized, this is why my life has been the way it is, so I can do this project…. If people loved it or not, it was really great for my soul. I had to do it."
Walking into her first day on set for The Last Showgirl, Anderson recalls feeling a little bit intimidated, particularly by her co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, who at the time had recently won a best supporting actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
"She's a force of nature," Anderson says. "She just grabbed me by the shoulders and she said, 'Pamela, I did this movie for you.' And I thought, 'God, she's just such a champion of women and such a wonderful person.' … I didn't know if I'd ever get to be able to be in a movie like this, and for [Jamie and Gia] to embrace me so much was just really incredible."
While Anderson says she's been playing characters in her personal life for years, now, as she enters a new chapter of her career, she feels like she can finally be herself.
"It's never too late," she says. "It's never too late to pick up where you left off or start over. It's just a choice. But also, you need someone else to believe in you, too. So the first thing is you have to believe in yourself before others do, and when you get the opportunity, recognize it and have the nerve to do it."
The full interview with Pamela Anderson is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Pamela Anderson produced by Lise Hosein.
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