Pamela Anderson’s Netflix documentary is a revelation
Netflix’s newly-released doco Pamela A Love Story challenges everything you thought you knew about one of the most famous women in the world.
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In recent years, Netflix has carved itself a welcome new documentary niche, profiling 50-something female entertainers looking to reframe the popular narratives about their careers.
After last year’s sympathetic Jennifer Lopez and Shania Twain Netflix docos, now comes Pamela, A Love Story – a look at arguably the second-most recognisable woman of the ’90s.
And it’s full of surprises. The first comes early, when we see the Pamela Anderson of today: 55, make-up-free and still strikingly beautiful, she lives a simple, quiet life in a beachside cabin in the tiny village of Ladysmith, Vancouver Island.
She was born on the island; both her parents live nearby.
Having travelled the world for decades, she’s now taking stock, looking through the crates of ephemera she’d sent back to her parents’ house for safekeeping. Anderson has always been a prolific documentarian of her own life:
VHS tapes and copious diary entries form the backbone of the film.
Anderson hands the notebooks to the film makers, generously explaining it may be better to have a voice actor read them because she’d be tempted to self-censor.
After a difficult childhood that saw her endure sexual abuse and family violence, a 22-year-old Anderson was plucked from obscurity when she appeared on the big screen at a football game.
Her big break, posing nude for Playboy in 1989, felt like liberation: a way to cast off the shame she’d felt around sex ever since her early abusive experiences, and craft a new, powerful persona for herself.
One audition for Baywatch later, and Anderson’s life became a whirlwind. Suddenly she was everywhere – and, as we see, all anyone wanted to ask her about was her breasts.
It’s easy to forget just how obsessed the media was with her breast implants at the height of her fame – but Anderson partly blames herself for that. The first time an interviewer asked if they were fake, she simply told the truth. She hadn’t realised saying it was none of their business was an option.
Throughout the doco, the Anderson of today and the woman we see in clips and interviews from the height of her fame is unaffected, self-deprecating, almost too willing to laugh at herself; smarter than most gave her credit for, but also the first to admit she was never going to win an Emmy for her slow-motion running on Baywatch, her first acting role.
There’s much sadness, too, as her infamous sex tape with husband Tommy Lee – stolen from their house, then sold without their consent for millions – emerges as a central trauma in her adult life.
From there, she explains, she was nothing but a joke to millions – and, unsure how to manoeuvre herself out of the situation, she found herself playing up to the jokes too.
After Tommy Lee, the marriages come thick and fast: Singer Kid Rock. Poker player Rick Salomon (twice). Film producer Jon Peters (strangely, the only ex-husband not mentioned). She even got married and divorced – to her own bodyguard – during the filming of the documentary.
She’s always been in love with falling in love – hence the title of the documentary – but seemed doomed to choose the wrong men.
So while there’s no happy ending in that department, the doco does end on a triumphant note, as Anderson takes on her biggest career challenge to date: Coaxed from her island semi-retirement, she’s convinced to play the lead role in a Broadway production of Chicago.
Once more, she’s humble to a fault, laughing uproariously as her sons rib her over the audiences’ low expectations.
She more than holds her own on Broadway – but isn’t sure what the future holds. After this documentary, let’s hope she doesn’t disappear back to her island for too long.
Originally published as Pamela Anderson’s Netflix documentary is a revelation
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