What Pamela Anderson reveals about her life in highly anticipated Netflix documentary
CBC
Warning: This story contains distressing details.
Pamela Anderson is finally telling her story on her own terms in the highly anticipated documentary Pamela: A Love Story, which is being released Tuesday on Netflix.
The documentary, co-produced by one of Anderson's two sons, Brandon Lee, and directed by Ryan White, gives viewers an honest and open account of Anderson's life — from early childhood to Playboy model and Hollywood vixen — through a series of never-before-seen home videos and private diary entries.
The audience is introduced to Anderson, 55, in a way she hasn't been seen before — on camera with no makeup and situated comfortably and casually in her childhood home in Ladysmith, B.C.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the film.
The Canadian American actress, model and animal rights advocate describes being exposed to her parents' fraught relationship from an early age. The couple would often fight, and her father was a big drinker who at times became violent, exposing Anderson and her brother to domestic abuse.
At times, they would leave her father and live on welfare, and Anderson says she can still remember the taste of the powdered milk they would drink. But her parents would eventually reunite — leading the troubled cycle to begin again.
This early exposure to abuse and a toxic relationship shaped Anderson's views on love, relationships and later her choice of men — her first boyfriend kicked her out of a moving car, leaving her to tumble into a ditch.
"I certainly don't blame my parents for my upbringing," Anderson said in the documentary. "I'm grateful because I gained a lot of good qualities, along with the bad. I'm a survivor."
Anderson alleges in the film that her babysitter repeatedly molested her as a child, describing three or four years of abuse.
"She always told me not to tell my parents. I tried to protect my brother from her, I tried to kill her," Anderson said, describing a moment she tried to stab the babysitter in the heart with a candy cane pen, telling her she wanted her to die.
The babysitter was then killed in a car accident the next day.
"I was sure that I did it, that I wished her dead and she died," Anderson said, adding that she carried the guilt throughout her adolescence.
Anderson alleges she was raped by a 25-year-old man when she was 12 years old.
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WARNING: This story contains allegations of sexual violence and may affect those who have experienced it or know someone affected by it.
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