I'M NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM

As her new memoir hits the shelves, Pamela Anderson reflects on her life, being the world's most misunderstood pinup and how her hunger for love resulted in six failed marriages

- DECCA AITKENHEAD

FOR most of her life, by most of the world, Pamela Anderson has been judged. Barely 22 when she first appeared on the cover of Playboy, she became a global household name in 1992 by sprinting in slow motion across the California sand in a red bathing suit.

The Baywatch star’s whirlwind wedding to Mötley Crüe rock star Tommy Lee three years later, on a Mexican beach just four days after they started dating, secured her notoriety as the iconic blonde bombshell wild child of her time.

She wore a white bikini; her maid of honour was a stranger she’d met at a nightclub the night before; she didn’t even know her new husband’s surname.

When the newlyweds’ safe was stolen from their home less than a year later, and a sex tape spliced together from private home videos was sold – first to Penthouse and then to the planet via the internet – many assumed it was a trashy publicity stunt contrived by the couple.

They tried to sue, but lawyers told Pamela she had no right to privacy after posing for Playboy. Slut-shamed by the tabloids, hounded by paparazzi, her marriage began to unravel and when Tommy attacked her in 1998 while she was holding their newborn second son, she left him. He was sentenced to six months in jail; they divorced, they re- conciled, they split again.

Twenty-five years, five more marriages and multiple Playboy covers and reality TV shows later, I opened her memoir – Love, Pamela – expecting the breathless vacuity of a pinup. I wasn’t the only one.

“People were, like, ‘There’s no way you could write a book’. Even my kids were saying, ‘Mom, you have to be able to write something that people are going to understand’.”