How Pamela Anderson is renovating her life in a Garden of Eden
Worlds away from the beaches of Baywatch, Pamela Anderson isn’t just make-up free – she is finally free to be herself and enjoy her own Garden of Eden.
Confidential
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Pamela Anderson has no explanation for some of the things she’s done in her 56 years.
The actor, advocate, model and mum is one of the most recognisable stars of Hollywood, thanks as much to attention on her personal life as her professional achievements over decades in the entertainment business.
“Isn’t that the great expression, there is no why,” Anderson tells Insider this week.
“I don’t know why I do half the things I do. It just happens.
“Things happen all around me that are just wild and crazy and I am almost 60 years old, so I have done a lot of things. Life is just a bunch of choices. I have never been one to be afraid. I kind of turn fear into faith.
“I always think the universe has a plan and I think life is boring if it is only for the ego.”
Anderson spoke to Insider over Zoom from her home in Canada. Her camera was turned off although her voice was immediately identifiable.
“You don’t want to see me right now,” she laughs.
“I’m covered in dirt. I have been in my garden and I am a mess.”
Anderson has long been an advocate for wildlife and the environment and is famously a long-time ambassador for PETA.
We bonded on the call over the fact this scribe had a baby brushtail possum nestled into a pouch through the interview as a volunteer for WIRES native animal rescue.
“I love little possums,” she says, “I rescued a possum once.”
Anderson is living at her grandfather’s property in Vancouver, where she grew up.
She has been renovating the property, the experience playing out in the first season of Pamela’s Garden of Eden that premiered last year.
The second season will premiere on Binge on November 17, with new episodes dropping weekly.
“My kids actually encouraged me to do a show based on redoing the property and my style and lifestyle, and a sustainable lifestyle, gardening, cooking, all those things,” she explains. “I thought, ‘I do it anyway, why not’. I’m here all on my own in a tiny little town, it’ll give me something to do, keep me out of trouble, which, you know, I got in plenty of trouble. This second season I’m really excited about because I feel like the first season of Pamela’s Garden of Eden, I was in a real vulnerable state.
“I came home finally, the homecoming kind of going back to the scene of the crime, really, and it is very triggering coming home … I came back to my childhood home and I wasn’t really renovating my house, I was renovating my life, and I just feel so much more grounded and in such a better place this year that I feel like this is when I took my power back and really started doing the things that I wanted to do with this place and with my life, so it is kind of a metaphor, and I really enjoyed it and I’m really proud of it.”
Anderson concedes she needed to go through some of that trauma – and processing those difficult times – to get to the good.
“It wasn’t my intent to be so open with my personal life, but it is just what was happening in the moment,” she says. “I am a public person so I just feel like people can’t help themselves. I always wonder why people’s personal lives, even when they’re kind of at the low points, are interesting. But I say how do you know hot if you don’t know cold? You have to go through the fire and I feel like that was the first season, and I feel much more much more grounded and in control of my life, and in control of the narrative, and it was very empowering to go through and I am kind of happy it all got caught – maybe it will help someone, who knows.”
Anderson is a pop culture icon of the ’90s and 2000s. She, of course, became world famous playing red swimsuit-wearing C.J Parker on Baywatch a couple of years after landing her first Playboy cover. She has famously been married multiple times – rockers Tommy Lee and Kid Rock are among her five husbands – and has two sons, Brandon and Dylan, to Motley Crue drummer Lee.
Pamela’s Garden of Eden in many ways pulled back that curtain and made her more human to a fanbase that knew her primarily as just a celebrity.
“I wanted it to be real,” she says. “I didn’t want it to be lit and made up. I just had to be myself; it was screaming to get out of me, I felt like I really needed to share who I was, who I am, and it has been so freeing.
“I feel like I am flying, like the little girl that I was when I was here (in her family home growing up). That’s why when I went to Paris Fashion Week, I decided not to wear makeup and I really felt like that five-year-old girl from Ladysmith who got to wear Victoria Beckham clothes.
“I have always felt so lucky to be in these positions and these places, and it does feel very surreal to me, so I think it is important to keep that childlike wonder. When you go home to where you were raised, it is triggering, like salt on the wound, and it is kind of crazy to do it but that is kind of the stuff I love to do. I love to challenge myself.”
Anderson said her make-up free move in Paris last month was a statement without even meaning to be. Photos of her glowing natural skin and freckles went around the world.
Reflecting weeks later, Anderson said: “I felt so free. It was not meant to be a statement, it is not world peace and I didn’t know if anybody would notice. I just wanted to spend more time in Paris. I wanted to go walking through the gardens, and look at the gardens and the sculptures and the architecture. I am not sitting in a make-up chair for three hours. I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You are almost 60, this is good enough, just enjoy Paris and not play the game’.”
The runway of Paris is a long way from Anderson’s family property in British Columbia – a small township with a population of 8500.
Asked what plans she had for the home, she hopes to keep it in the family – her parents Barry and Carol are also based there.
“I want to make this a family kind of compound,” she says. “The trees all know me here since birth. It is a very powerful place for me. It is a place I always came back to heal, to refuel. Me coming to terms with this place, it is really giving me such a solid footing because these are things that I need to address, and for me to be open and available to anybody in my future, these were things that I needed to come to terms with and get through, and feel the feelings and sit here in the dark in my grandparents’ house.
“My grandfather was my best friend growing up, and he taught me about mythology and fairy tales, and elves and gnomes and all these kind of fun things. So I just feel like this is a magical spot for me. I couldn’t imagine giving it up.”
Anderson has a long-time connection with Australia and has been a long-time supporter of Wikipedia founder Julian Assange.
“I love Australia like I love the south of France,” she says.
“People are very fun – generalising of course. It just feels very relaxed, it is very Canadian. I think we are similar, very nature driven and nature aware, which I love.”
Four-and-a-half years out from turning 60, Anderson is excited for the future – whatever that looks like.
“I can’t wait to be a grandma,” she says.
“My kids make fun of me walking around my property now in long aprons – it is very Little House on the Prairie. I am loving it. I am living my dream life. It is very farm-core, whatever you want to call it.”
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