Best Interview
Interview with Pamela Anderson
by Elisa Leonelli
“I like Shelly’s optimism and generosity”
Nominated to the Golden Globes as Best Dramatic Actress, The Last Showgirl’s protagonist Pamela Anderson is grateful to Gia Coppola who was able to capture her true soul after seeing the documentary about her life, Pamela, a Love Story, based on the autobiography Love, Pamela.
Pamela Anderson-The Last Showgirl
How does the success of the film, which marks the rebirth of your acting career, feel?
“I feel very honored and I feel a great relief, because it was like I had been keeping the secret of who I really am for a long time. I felt guilty about some of the choices I made. I don’t think that many people knew, during those years when I was posing for Playboy, that I was sitting in the ‘Samuel French’ bookstore in Hollywood reading the plays of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. Those female characters appealed to me, but I didn’t know how to get there, and I didn’t know anyone who did that job. I have friends who are artists, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince, incredible people who love me, but not people who worked in the cinema. I’ve always said that being part of popular culture is both a blessing and a curse, because I had a handicap in proving that I was capable of doing other things besides the superficial skills by which I became famous.”
Pamela Anderson © Zoey Grossman
Do you identify with this showgirl who, at a certain age, loses the job she loved to do after thirty years of career, when the show closes its doors?
“There are many parallels between my story and that of Shelly, who reevaluates her choices in life. It was a role made for me. I know how hard it is to keep all that glitter glued on and hold those heavy feathers on your head, I know what it is to wait in the dressing room talking about children with colleagues and what to buy to cook dinner, waiting for the signal that you have to go on stage, and then you start running in the corridors of the backstage. I played Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago on Broadway and we had these kinds of conversations. That experience helped me a lot to play Shelly. Then Gia contacted me, who doesn’t judge other people’s behavior, and the planets aligned in my favor; so many magical things happen in the movie business and I feel very lucky to have had this opportunity.
Pamela Anderson-The Last Showgirl
What are other similarities and differences between her in life and Shelly’s character in the film?
“There are some rather obvious similarities that have served me as a starting point, love and nostalgia for beauty and for the charm of this type of art, which consists in creating memorable characters. But there are also big differences. For example, I spent a lot of time bringing up my two children (Brandon and Dylan, born from marriage to Tommy Lee of Mötley Crew in 1995, ed), I didn’t want anyone’s help, I wanted to do it myself. So I would have behaved differently from Shelly when the young showgirl knocks on her door and she does not let her in, I would have invited her to come inside, I would have cooked pierogis (dumplings in the Polish tradition, ed) and we would have cried together all night. I like Shelly’s complexity, the fact that she’s always holding her heart in her hand, she’s very optimistic, she’s very generous, but she’s also complex and imperfect. He was a character with whom it was easy to empathize, beautifully described in the script.
How did you find acting with Billie Lourd as Shelly’s daughter, whom her mother had entrusted to another family to pursue her artistic career?
“We met for the first time on the day we shot that scene, and she came very prepared with a lot of life experience, as I was. Our experiences clashed lovingly, but with a barrier between us. So the fact that we didn’t know each other before worked, because there is a lot of conflict between them. As a mother, it’s sad for me to think that Shelly has a maternal instinct towards young showgirls, but she doesn’t really know her own daughter. She feels distant even if she wants a better life for her. Billie confessed to me afterwards that she thought of her grandmother Debbie Reynolds and empathized with her mother, Carrie Fisher. It was healing for her to be able to express those feelings.
What do you think when you see that the youngest directors in independent cinema appreciate actresses of your generation, like Jamie Lee Curtis, Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman?
“I am overwhelmed by emotion when I see the difference in respect for actresses like us, because for so many years I was considered a one-dimensional person in the eyes of people, even though I had children and so many problems in life. I am glad that this film shows the new generations of actresses who face such difficulties as they face similar difficulties now, when things have changed, that they can start a family with other women on the set, as it happened in our film. A new world has opened up for me and I hope that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that there will be other opportunities in my career. I really needed to make a movie like this for my soul.”
(English translation of text as published in Best Movie, Italy. March issue)