Fame isnât everything.
Pamela Anderson, 57, decided to move back to Canada because she wasnât feeling good about her life, she revealed to Better Homes & Gardens.
âA few years back, I kind of gave up at some point and needed a change,â Anderson said in the interview, published Wednesday. âI thought, ‘Well, I guess thatâs just what people think of me. I was not in a good space when I moved back to Canada.â
The former âBaywatchâ star added, âI donât know what happened over the last few decades, but I feel now so far removed from the image of who I was. I felt very sad and lonely. I didnât feel just misunderstood, I felt like I had really screwed up, that my whole life was a bundle of mistakes.â
The former ’90s sex symbol said, âI was hard on myself, and I thought I put my family through a lot and put my kids through so much. I came to a point where I decided to move home and disappear and get into my garden.â
Anderson has two adult sons: Brandon Thomas Lee, 28, and Dylan Jagger Lee, 26, that she shares with her ex husband, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, 61.
Anderson and Lee had a short yet infamously rocky marriage from 1995-95, culminating in a famous leaked sex tape (that was the material for the 2022 Hulu show âPam & Tommyâ starring Sebastian Stan and Lily James).
After Lee, Anderson had four more husbands, including Kid Rock, poker player Rick Salmon — who she alleged put a crack pipe in her Christmas tree — Jon Peters, and Dan Hayhurst (who she divorced most recently, in 2022).Â
In her 2023 Netflix documentary âPamela, A Love Story,â Anderson told her older son, âItâs probably gonna get me a lot of sât for saying this, but I really loved your dad for all the right reasons. And I donât think Iâve ever loved anybody else.â
Anderson maintained in that film that Lee was the love of her life.
âI never got over not being able to make it work with the father of my kids,â she said onscreen.
âAnd even though I thought I could recreate a family or fall in love with somebody else, itâs just not me. So I think thatâs probably why I keep failing in all of my relationships.â
The documentary also covered her parentsâ tumultuous relationship during her isolated and harrowing childhood in Canada, which she said set an example for her.
âMy parents were wild and crazy and madly in love, and made stupid decisions, and hurt each other and hurt us. But they stuck it out, and I can see that theyâre happy now. So I think Iâd rather be alone than not be with the father of my kids,â she said. âItâs impossible to be with anybody else.â
But, more recently, Anderson told Better Homes & Garden that sheâs trying to âbreak the family cycles.â
âSometimes I found myself caught up in things where I thought, âNo, this is the way everybody else did it. Iâm not doing it this way,’” she said.
“I see the family patterns, and then I get out of it somehow. I donât want to keep running either. I want to stay. I still have a lot of growing up to do. In some ways Iâm still a little kid trying to figure it all out.”
The former Playboy model also told the outlet that the public perception of her persona isnât quite accurate.
âPeople have this pneumatic kind of image of me from Playboy to Baywatch, to my rock ânâ roll type of husbands, to everything else.”
She added that she threw dinner parties and cooked meals for her kids, but that part of her life “wasnât what was seen publicly.â
But, she added, she also âplayed intoâ her public image.
âIâm glad I did all that, but Iâm really glad Iâm where I am now. I think the most important part is, I made it through all of it,â she said.
âAnd now itâs such a relief that I get to be myself and enjoy this time.â
During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, she was âfinally able to sit” with herself, which led to a âhealing experience.âÂ
Anderson’s sons are now old enough to understand the âbig pictureâ of her life.Â
âOf course, over the years, as they learned about things in my past, both age-appropriate and not age-appropriate, unfortunately, they thought I was taken advantage of in some ways,â she said.
She told the outlet that her sons have said to her, ââWhatever youâve created by being you, just keep being you. Weâre going to try and find ways for you to keep doing what you love but also sharing it with people in a way where it benefits you too.ââ
Her advice to them, meanwhile, is to realize that âchallenges are the poetry of your life.”
“You wouldnât know hot if you didnât know cold. You wouldnât have appreciation for the good times without going through the hard times,” she explained. “Itâs all a roller coaster.âÂ