Pamela Anderson planned to make pickles at home in B.C. Then, she was offered the role of a lifetime
CBC
As she turned the pages of the script, one her agent had previously turned down, Pamela Anderson knew she could play the lead role — and play it well.
"Goosebumps," she told CBC's On the Coast guest host Amy Bell.
"I knew how to play her. I knew that I could inhabit this character, I could transform. And I just felt the nuances and the feelings that our lives are parallel in some ways."
Director Gia Coppola had sent the script for The Last Showgirl to Anderson's son, Brandon Thomas Lee, hoping he might be able to convince her to take the role.
Anderson had recently moved home to Ladysmith, B.C., the small town on Vancouver Island she grew up in. Having just finished her Broadway stint as Roxie Hart in Chicago, she was looking forward to spending time in her garden, and making pickles and jam — like a page out of her cookbook, I Love You: Recipes from the Heart, which came out last fall.
"My aunt won all the pickles and mustard awards actually, on Vancouver Island," she said during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers last week. "I come from a long line of pickles."
But the character of Shelly Gardner and the story of The Last Showgirl pulled Anderson away from that plan — at least for a few days; Anderson says it only took 18 days to shoot the film.
The movie centres around Shelly, a 57-year-old showgirl in Las Vegas, who's prompted to reflect on how show business has impacted her life and her family after the club she's worked in for decades announces it will close.
"I felt, what if I never get to do another movie? Because I might not. And so I said, this is my chance to apply myself and do everything that I know," Anderson said.
Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week, Anderson explained how she was discovered at 21 years old — at a B.C. Lions game in 1989.
"I had a Labatt's T-shirt on and the camera man zoomed in on me and put me up on the Jumbotron all night," she said.
That led to calls from People magazine and Playboy, she said, and her first plane ride to L.A.
From there, she spent many years in the spotlight.
Anderson appeared in Playboy magazine, which led to a few film and TV roles, including a recurring role on Home Improvement. Her star power further skyrocketed thanks to her role as C.J. Parker on Baywatch, and her titular character in the 1996 film Barb Wire, based on the comic book character.
