Pamela Anderson's October 1998 Cosmopolitan Cover Story in Full

Cosmopolitan

a day ago

Six decades ago, legendary editor Helen Gurley Brown took a stuffy literary magazine and transformed it into an audacious cultural tome. Cosmopolitan has kept evolving since, leading conversations with a sharp, provocative approach that's helped define entire eras of womanhood. One thing that's remained constant: our iconic cover stories, featuring definitive interviews with the leading stars of the time. Join us in revisiting the most classic ones—with their original headlines and exact wording, for better or worse, intact—for a hit of nostalgia and a deep dive into how celebrity has also evolved over the years.
Dressed in tight capri pants and a tiny tee, Pamela Anderson Lee strolls through the soundstage where her new action-comedy series, VIP, is being filmed. Stopping to chat with everyone from the producers to the grips, Lee, 31, appears to be the den mother of the set. 'How's your mom?' she asks a crew member, offering to hook him up with a new doctor to help the situation. 'Let me know what I can do," she says, tenderly squeezing his arm.
On the syndicated VIP, Lee plays Vallery Irons, a hotdog-stand worker who, through a zany series of events, becomes a bodyguard. Invited to a movie premiere by a Hollywood action star, Irons ends up saving the actor from a would-be assassin. Her beautiful, heroic face is splashed across front pages and magazine covers, and the owners of a protection agency decide she's just the woman to run their company. What they don't count on is that she actually likes the work and, as head of Vallery Irons Protection (VIP, get it?), becomes engrossed in her clients' problems
'This show is perfect for me. I'm producing it, so I get to decide just how ditzy Vallery acts,' says the ex-Baywatch beauty as she walks by the pool at Vallery Irons's apartment. 'I get to decide when to put on a bathing suit. And I get to decide if I save everyone—or let a few of them die!'
'Glamour, action, comedy—the show has it all,' she adds. 'For storylines, I just have to steal from my own life!"
Lee cracks up at this, but when she sees a crew member stringing lights, her laughter trails off and she rushes over to him. He had hit a rough patch with his girlfriend, and Lee wants to know how things are going now. 'Did she like the flowers?' she asks. He nods, and her face lights up—she's thrilled that her idea helped smooth things over. 'Now just be nice to her and everything should be okey-dokey.'
It would take a lot more than flowers to rescue Lee's own relationship. Just two days before this scene unfolded, Lee's husband—Mötley Crüe drummer and notorious bad boy Tommy Lee—began serving a six-month sentence in the Los Angeles County Jail for spousal abuse, and the couple's divorce is pending.
'I'm not gonna cry because I have to do a scene in five minutes,' Lee says, fighting back tears. 'It's been the hardest thing. It's very, very sad. It just seems so unfinished, so unresolved or whatever, and I know he really loves me, and I love him. He's my husband, he's part of me, we're definitely soul-connected—definitely—so this is really painful.'
Lee swallows hard and forces a smile. 'What a year,' she says, shaking her head slowly. What a year, indeed.
In May of 1997, Lee was sued for allegedly backing out of the cable-TV movie Hello, She Lied. When the lawsuit hit the news, it was reported that she had quit the project because she didn't want to appear nude onscreen, which the script called for. The real issue, however, was money. The movie's producers claimed Lee had reneged on a verbal agreement to do the movie: they went ahead and made it anyway, changing the name to Miami Hustle and hiring Kathy Ireland to replace Lee. When the film tanked, the producers sued. 'They tried to prove how much they lost by not using me—isn't that ridiculous?' Lee says. 'They sued me for $5 million and lost on every count.'
Lee's legal victory was complete—the judge found she had never agreed to do the movie—but the publicity (the trial was broadcast on Court TV) was stressful. Lee says she paid a quarter of a million dollars 'defending myself on something that was totally bogus.' And to some, she came off as hypocritical for supposedly protesting about appearing nude. After all, she'd made millions as a sex symbol, and the now-infamous video of her and Tommy honeymooning in Cancún, Mexico, had been in circulation for months before the televised trial. Stolen from the Lees' Malibu home and marketed over the Internet and via an 800 number, the video shows Pamela and Tommy making love.
Lee says she's loath to be quoted about the video: 'Any attention I draw to it gives another person a reason to buy it,' she says. But she does have a few choice (unprintable) words for Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), the company that has made an estimated $50 million from sales of the video. 'These guys are selling stolen property, and we're suing them full-force,' she says of her suit against IEG, which is pending in federal court.
Things went from bad to worse for Pamela this past February, when she and Tommy had a violent argument at their home. He assaulted her in front of their boys, Dylan and Brandon, then just seven weeks and 18 months old, respectively. Pamela called 911, and Tommy was arrested. 'Picking up that phone was the hardest thing I ever did in my life,' she says. 'But I had to protect the kids. I've never been so afraid.'
'I catch myself some days, you know, really missing Tommy,' she continues, 'and wanting to go to his rescue like I always have. But then I tell myself, That obviously doesn't work—it's his trip and there's nothing you can do.'
As traumatic as it was, Pamela's split from Tommy has been a sort of godsend for her, the catalyst for a personal transformation. She has moved in to a new house, one that's 'bright and full of flowers, not dark and gothic like our old house.' Gone is the old Pamela Lee, the one who, during a trip to Tahiti, got a primitive tattoo in a hammer-and-bamboo procedure that was so painful it made her pass out. 'I woke up, threw up violently, then went back at two in the morning to have it finished,' she says.
'I used to say, 'If you're gonna do it, overdo it.' But I'm changing my theory on life. Things need to be done, not overdone.'
Now, Pamela Lee is softer, less extreme. Instead of the wild I-just-got-out-of-bed hair, she has a sleek, understated do, pulled back with a little clip. Her new look is a far cry from that of the canyon-cleavaged character she played on Baywatch from 1992 to 1996 and the leather-clad biker chick she portrayed in the action flick Barb Wire (1996). On the day she was interviewed for this story, she wore just a hint of mascara and a tiny bit of lip gloss; her freckles stood out more than her breasts.
Lee trips to downplay the apparent changes, saying she's still the same old Pamela. 'I've obviously evolved, but you know what? I like being a Barbie. Half of my closet has the Barbie clothes and the other half has Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, and Versace. I'm not trying to change my image. I'm just growing.'
'It's funny, when I do photo shoots lately,' she continues, 'photographers are like, 'We want to shoot you like you've never been shot before.' And I'm like, 'Oh, God, please. Just go shoot Kate Moss if you want that natural look.'
Lee's life now centers around her sons, Brandon, who will be 2 when this story comes out, and Dylan, who will be 8 months. 'My little meatballs, oh, they're so cute,' she says. Lee's VIP dressing room has turned into a playpen. Stuffed animals and toy trucks are strewn about, and the baby's crib has leopard-print sheets. 'I've been a full-blown mother since I was a little girl,' she says. 'My brother, Gerry, is four years younger than me, and I thought he was born for me. I looked after him like he was my own. I thought I'd have children before I was 20. My cousins had kids when they were 16, 17, 18. That's what I come from.'
Sitting amid the baby clutter in her dressing room, Lee kicks off her shoes and sticks her feet into my lap, giggling. She does things like this now and then, playful, girlish things that belie her image as a vixen and convince you that her transformation from wild child to mellow mama might just be for real.
But I have my doubts when she blurts: 'I'm sleeping with two men now—and I'm more satisfied than ever! Wanna see their pictures?' She reads the shock in my face and smiles wickedly. Then, she pulls out a photo album and opens it. 'Aren't they gorgeous?' she asks, staring adoringly at snapshots of her sons.
Pamela Anderson has lived on the edge all her life. Born in Ladysmith, on Canada's Vancouver Island, she is the daughter of teenage parents, Carol and Bany Anderson, a waitress and a furnace repairman. The first place Pamela can remember living was a tiny house perched on a bluff, 80 feet above the Pacific Ocean. The family moved around a lot, and although Pamela was a good student, she cared more about her social life. As brother Gerry writes in her biography on her official website, she was nicknamed Popcorn because 'she would kind of hop when she running from the boys.'
The online biography describes Pamela's childhood largely as a happy one. During high school, she was popular and active in sports (especially volleyball) and music (she played saxophone and sang in a jazz choir), and she shared a close relationship with her brother. As Gerry writes, however, 'Things were tense at home. As far as I remember, Pam and our father were at odds a lot....Looking back, it seemed like there was a lot of yelling going on and the only voice being heard was the old man's.'
Lee is quick to come to her father's defense. 'My dad has really mellowed out,' she says. 'He's a different man now than he was when I was young.' He and her mother moved to Los Angeles two years ago to be with Lee and her brother, and to help raise Brandon and Dylan. 'Dad's very close to the boys,' she says. 'He takes them out every day to play.'
'But my mom has grown up with this bitterness—she has a lot of resentment from years ago,' Lee continues. 'She's part of the reason I've been strong about Tommy, because she always told me, 'I don't want you to stay [in an abusive marriage].''
As she grew older, Pamela yearned to leave behind her small town life in Canada; she got her chance at age 22. A fitness instructor at the time, she was 'going nowhere—and had a bad boyfriend, to boot,' Lee says. One afternoon in 1989, she attended a British Columbia Lions football game, wearing a Labatt's beer T-shirt. When a camera scanning the crowd projected her image onto the stadium's wide screen, the fans cheered wildly. Pamela's obvious sex appeal and instant popularity impressed Labatt's executives, who tracked her down and offered her a contract as their Blue Zone Girl. Needless to say, she accepted.
Having achieved minor celebrity with the ad, Lee attended a fashion show in which a girlfriend of hers was modeling, and a Playboy magazine editor who happened to be there approached her about doing a pictorial and possibly even a cover. 'I asked my mother what she thought about me posing nude, and she said she would do it if they asked her, so I did it.'
Later that day, Lee went to Los Angeles to do the Playboy shoot—and never returned home. Her exposure in the magazine (she appeared on the cover of the October 1989 issue) quickly led to other work. She landed the part of Lisa, The Tool Time Girl on Home Improvement, and spent two years wearing overalls and delivering wrenches and screwdrivers to Tim Allen's TV-show character. Then, after a single audition for Baywatch in 1992, she signed on to play crystal-gazing C.J. Parker, the role that brought her to the attention of more than a billion people. During Lee's four years on the syndicated program, Baywatch was the most-watched television show in the world, and it became the first American show to be broadcast in China.
In 1996, when she was pregnant with Brandon, Lee quit Baywatch to develop her new show. 'I felt like it was a great opportunity,' she says of VlP, whose producer is J.F. Lawton, the writer of Pretty Woman. During her transition from Baywatch to VIP, Lee also made the aforementioned feature film, Barb Wire, playing a futuristic bounty hunter in S&M garb. Although critics panned the movie, Lee counts it as a personal success. 'I had starred in just one television show,' Lee says. 'The fact that I was offered a starring role in a film that was gonna be a theatrical release was huge for me. I was really proud.
In 1993, Pamela was engaged for a short time to actor Scott Baio, and after that union fell apart, she dated producer Jon Peters, Poison lead singer Bret Michaels, TV Superman Dean Cain, former MTV host Eric Nies, and surfer Kelly Slater. Then, on February 19, 1995, she married Tommy Lee on the beach in Cancún. The couple had met four short days earlier. 'It was a love-at-first-sight kind of thing,' Pamela says. 'There was a real strong attraction.' The bride wore a teeny white bikini and sunglasses; the groom was in nothing but cut-offs, proudly displaying the tattoos that cover his body (MAYHEM is written in huge letters across his stomach).
The Lees certainly wasted no time starting a family (Brandon was born June 5, 1996). 'He has a lot of good qualities,' Pamela says of Tommy. 'I know he always wanted to be a father, and I thought he'd be a terrific dad.'
Concentrating on her work has helped Lee rebound from the emotional trauma of her split from Tommy. It has brought a routine to her life, which is exactly what she needs now. 'I want things to be normal for a while, whatever the hell that means,' she says. Really, she knows exactly what it means: concentrating on her work, raising her boys, spending time with her family.
'Pamela's a lot smarter than she lets on,' says J.F. Lawton. 'It suits her needs to play innocent, but she's smart and shrewd and knows exactly what she wants.'
What she says she doesn't want is to follow her usual romantic pattern and dive right in with another man (even if the tabloids hinted in August that she was seeing former boyfriend Kelly Slater). 'People talk to me about men these days and I just cringe,' she says. 'First of all, I'm still married to Tommy. Plus, I am so not interested in men now. I've never really been alone. I've always been, well, an overlapper in the boyfriend department. But I have two beautiful children, so I am very fulfilled.'
'And I'm working really hard, so I can't imagine even having time right now for men, or even for Tommy. If I ever meet another guy, he's going to have to be really great for me to allow him in my life with my children, and he's going to have to realize that I have three children, not just two; that Tommy's like another child, and he's always going to be in my life.'
Lee holds out her left hand, displaying the tattoo on her ring finger. It reads TOMMY. 'I'm thinking of changing it to MOMMY,' she says.
Lee says she now talks to Tommy occasionally in monitored telephone calls that he places from jail. 'You know, he has to change. He's in there, he's doing therapy, and when he gets out, we'll see what happens. I really don't believe that we'll ever be together again, but he's always going to be the father of my children. So, I support his growth as a human being—I want him to be a good dad.'
'Last Mother's Day,' she continues, 'he sent me a card. Inside. he wrote, 'It must've been really hard being a mother to all three of us, looking after us.' He knows what's going on; it's not just an overnight thing for him to get better.'