The actors who inspire Pamela Anderson the most: “That’s the kind of actress I’d love to be”
It has taken a long time for Pamela Anderson to be taken seriously. For so long, people saw nothing more than her blonde hair and her body, so often presented in a high-cut red swimsuit for Baywatch.
A sex tape scandal, paired with the incredibly backwards yet widely-held societal belief that women who look like Anderson are nothing more than vapid airheads, has left the actor long struggling to be seen as more than the sum of her body parts.
She might’ve been Playmate of the Month in 1990, and she might have made some questionable acting choices in the past, such as playing the lead in the sexually-charged superhero movie Barb Wire, and starring in parody movies like Scary Movie 3 and Superhero Movie, but Anderson has always harnessed much more talent than people have ever given her credit for – she was just never given the chance to show it.
With her role in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl in 2024, Anderson brought attention to her acting chops, and she gave a great performance as an ageing showgirl, clearly drawing from her own personal experience in the spotlight, and that same year, she showed a more comedic side with a role in the hugely successful remake of The Naked Gun alongside Liam Neeson – now she’s got more roles on the horizon, spanning dramas, satires, and absurdist comedy. The Pamela Anderson renaissance is well and truly here.
These bold choices – a far cry from 2008’s Blonde and Blonder – reflect Anderson’s true love for cinema, which she revealed when she appeared in the Criterion Closet. It seems like she has finally found her true calling in the industry, although her dream is to be the kind of actor who existed in the Old Hollywood era.
Picking out the 1955 movie Summertime, Anderson said, “This would be something I would love to remake – I don’t know if anyone would ever think of me for that, but David Lean is an amazing director, and I just love her, Katharine Hepburn… You know, this is the style of acting that I love.”
“The passion and the importance of the craft, and when I watch her and when I watch Elizabeth Taylor, for instance, in Suddenly, Last Summer, I’m so inspired.”
Pamela Anderson
Hepburn and Taylor defined classic Hollywood, both with their unforgettable screen presence… I mean, there’s this mixture of untouchable glamour but also this certain sense of being down-to-earth that they both carry, and it’s this blend of seemingly opposing sensibilities that made them so striking.
“That’s the kind of actress I would love to be. Not a contemporary actress, but an actress from this time. So, they’re very inspirational to me,” Anderson added.
Unsurprisingly, Hepburn was Oscar-nominated for her role in Summertime, while Taylor was also up for the prize a few years later with Suddenly, Last Summer. The gravitas of both of these performances has long lingered in Anderson’s memory, and now that she has entered this new era in her acting career, who knows if she’ll join them in the Academy Awards hall of fame, too?
