Pamela Anderson Says Strangers Apologize and Tell Her ‘I Like You Now’ After Reading Her Memoir

Pamela Anderson is pondering how her public image has shifted since the release of her bestselling memoir Love, Pamela.

“I get a lot of people walking up to me on the street, saying, ‘I had no idea who you were, and I’m sorry for all the ways I thought about you before, because I like you now,’ ” the actress and model, 56, told Elle in a new interview of the time after the publication of Love, Pamela earlier this year.

Recalling her reaction, Anderson, who models pieces from Aritzia’s fall 2023 Babaton campaign in the accompanying photos for her Elle interview, said, “I’m just like, ‘What did you think of me before?’ ”

But, she admitted of her past image, “You don’t really think about it in the moment. You’re raising two kids, you’re trying to survive, your heart is broken, you’re trying to fill up your life with people and making mistakes. We’re all just trying to live every day.”

“So, I guess, decades got away from me,” Anderson continued. “And it was nice to come home, full circle. I’m working more than ever, when I thought I was retired!”

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Pamela Anderson in Aritzia for Elle.

Courtesy of Aritzia

Pamela Anderson on Finally Telling Her ‘Whole Story’ in Her Own Words: ‘It’s Been a Healing Process’

Last year, when the Hulu series Pam & Tommy dramatized her love affair and marriage to Tommy Lee and the theft of their personal tapes, Anderson didn’t comment. But she set the record straight in a memoir and documentary for Netflix.

Anderson, who now lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, previously told PEOPLE, it was her two sons Brandon, 27, and Dylan, 25, who “encouraged me to tell my story.”

“[There’s] a little bit of anxiety before it comes out, because this has been a year, basically, of therapy, going through my life from my first memory to my last memory,” said the former Baywatch star of writing her book. “I’m really proud of it. It is something I wrote every word of. I didn’t have a collaborator. I didn’t have any ghostwriter, nothing.”

“It’s just one girl’s story of how I made it through: a small-town girl going to Los Angeles and just going through all the wild and crazy adventures I did and then circling back and going home,” Anderson explained.

Pamela Anderson’s memoir Love, Pamela.
HarperCollins

See Pamela Anderson ‘Take Control of the Narrative’ in Trailer for Netflix’s ‘Pamela, a love story’

In her interview with Elle, Anderson also recalled a helpful saying about image that she used to hear regularly from a fellow famous blonde.

“That was a great expression that Suzanne Somers told me. She used to always say, ‘Hi, dumb blonde.’ Meanwhile, she’s a gazillionaire, doing all these great things,” the Barb Wire star said.

In her own career, Anderson said, she “always thought it was fun to not have anything to live up to, because you could only surprise people.”

“So it was to my advantage sometimes … and if people didn’t want to look at you as an intelligent person, because you looked a certain way?” she added. “I think we’ve grown past that, hopefully.”

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Source: HIS Education