Pamela Anderson has opened up about her romantic history, with the Baywatch star revealing that her relationship with ex-husband Tommy Lee “may have been the only time [she] was ever truly in love”.
The actress, 55, reflects on her love life, and her former relationship with the Mötley Crüe musician, in her new memoir “Love, Pamela”. In an excerpt from the book shared with People before it is published on 31 January, Anderson recalls the fun and love she and Lee shared during their relationship.
“My relationship with Tommy may have been the only time I was ever truly in love,” she writes, before noting: “We had fun and our rule was no rules.”
The couple married in Cancun, Mexico, in 1995 after beginning their relationship earlier that year. According to Anderson, the pair just “wanted to have babies and be together forever”.
In June 1996, the pair welcomed their first son, Brandon. The couple later welcomed another son, Dylan, in 1997.
However, as Anderson recalls in her forthcoming memoir, everything changed after a theft of personal tapes from the couple’s garage resulted in a leak of their “sex tape,” an event that the activist recalls “ruined lives, starting with our relationship”.
“It ruined lives, starting with our relationship - and it’s unforgivable that people, still to this day, think they can profit from such a terrible experience, let alone a crime,” she writes, according to People.
The crime, and the public scandal that followed, became the subject of attention again last year with the release of the Hulu series Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan.
In 1998, less than a year after Anderson and Lee welcomed their second child, the couple got into an argument at their home amid the stress from the leaked tapes. According to Anderson, the altercation turned violent when her then-husband “ripped” their oldest son away from her and “threw” her and the couple’s seven-month-old son “into a wall”.
She recalls calling 911, at which point Lee was arrested. The musician later pleaded no contest to felony spousal battery and was sentenced to six months in jail. At the time, Anderson filed for divorce, with the model revealing in her memoir that that was when their “hell began”.
According to Anderson, her 1998 divorce from Lee was one of the “hardest, lowest, most difficult” points in her life, as she recalls being “crushed”.
“I still couldn’t believe that the person I loved the most was capable of what had happened that night,” she writes, according to People. “We were both devastated, but I had to protect my babies.”
Although Anderson writes that she never fell in love again, she has remarried multiple times since her divorce from Lee. She married and divorced Kid Rock in 2006, before marrying producer Rick Solomon in 2007, and again in 2014. The pair divorced a year later. Anderson also reportedly married producer Jon Peters in 2020, according to E! News, before announcing their separation 12 days later.
Anderson was most recently married to her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst, with the couple exchanging vows on Christmas Eve in 2020. The pair announced they had separated in January 2022, with a source telling E! News it was a “pandemic relationship”.
In her upcoming memoir, Anderson, who is currently single, writes that she leads a “more romantic life now that [she’s] alone” than she ever did in her relationships.
However, she admits she thinks it would be “lovely” if there were someone else in her life who wanted the same things, but that she has “never met them”.
“It’s usually about catering to them, and there has to be a balance,” she says.
As for her current relationship with Lee, Anderson reveals that the pair still “check in” every so often, and that she’s “forever grateful” to the musician.
“Tommy is the father of my kids and I’m forever grateful,” she writes.
The release of Anderson’s memoir will coincide with a new Netflix documentary about her life, Pamela, A Love Story, which also premieres on 31 January.
In a trailer for the documentary, Anderson reflects on her and Lee’s stolen sex tape, and her pain at having the scandal revisited. “I didn’t sleep last night at all. I blocked that stolen tape out of my life in order to survive. And now that it’s all coming up again, I feel sick,” she says, in what appears to be a reference to the Hulu show.
