From tattooed ring fingers to an infamous sex tape,
there was never a dull moment when it came to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's relationship.
This is the inside story of one of the wildest celebrity marriages of the 90s.
On New Year's Eve in 1994, Pamela Anderson headed out to party at Sanctuary, the club
she had invested in on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip. At the party, Tommy Lee was reportedly influenced
by a combination of Ecstasy and booze, which he later recalled for the 2001 Mötley Crüe memoir,
The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band. According to the New York
Post, Anderson sent a shot of Goldschläger over to Lee. He downed it before hand-delivering his
own gift to Anderson: his alcohol-infused saliva. Anderson told Movieline in 1995:
"He came up, grabbed me and licked my face. I thought he was a cool,
friendly, nice guy. I gave him my number."
Lee used the number, ringing in 1995 with an ongoing flurry of calls to
Anderson. When she finally answered, she told him she was headed to Cancún,
Mexico, for a photo shoot. Anderson recalled during a 2001 interview for Rolling Stone:
"[He said] 'You're going without me?' I begged him not to come down [...] He said,
'OK. See you later.' I thought it was a weird way for the conversation to end."
Despite Tommy Lee's antics and cocky demeanor on the first night they met,
or more likely because of his behavior, Pamela Anderson may have been instantly
attracted to the rockstar. However, her friend, Melanie, was far from impressed.
Lee told Rolling Stone that when the actress' friends wanted to call it a night,
he walked her out of the club to Melanie's car and gave her a kiss goodnight. Lee went on to
explain how he knew Anderson's friend was not happy with the situation, telling Rolling Stone:
"I later found out that when Pamela closed the car door,
the first thing Melanie did was look at her and say, 'Don't even think about it.'"
Anderson admitted she was coy in her response and pretended not to know what her friend was
talking about, but Melanie was adamant and, according to Rolling Stone, said,
"Listen to me: That guy is a [...] maniac."
If Tommy Lee's crush on Pamela Anderson wasn't crystal-clear from the face-licking
and phone-calling prompted by their meeting, he made his feelings transparent by flying to Mexico
to find her. According to the New York Post, Lee flew to Cancún, raced to the Ritz-Carlton hotel,
where Anderson was staying, and whisked her out for drinks at a famous restaurant called Señor
Frog's. On February 19, 1995 — within four days of Lee's arrival in Mexico — Anderson and Lee got
married on the beach in a bikini and shorts. The couple's courtship was anything but traditional,
so they didn't exchange wedding bands with their vows. Instead, they got more
permanent marks of their mutual devotion: each other's names tattooed on their ring fingers.
"This is forever.”
“Absolutely!”
“I've never felt like this before."
"I've never felt like this in my life."
In 1995, the French and Dutch versions of Penthouse magazine published explicit,
stolen Polaroids of Pamela Anderson and Tommy
Lee. According to the New York Post, Anderson said that year:
"Those were good shots. When I saw the first Polaroid, I was,
like, 'Whoa, baby. We should frame this.'"
However, Anderson and Lee had a different reaction when an explicit video was stolen from their safe,
leaked, and sold online. The couple had filmed the X-rated video while on vacation in Lake Mead
near Las Vegas earlier that year. According to Entertainment Weekly, Anderson said at the time:
"I'm just horrified. I don't know why I bother to put on clothes when I go out anymore."
The couple sued Internet Entertainment Group, the company behind distributing
the tape. According to Express, the case was settled in 1997.
"You know, It was stolen property. Neither of us made anything from it."
On June 5, 1996, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee welcomed their first child,
a son named Brandon. The baby was born in the midst of the legal issues Anderson and Lee
were dealing with surrounding their leaked sex tape. According to Hollywood Life, the couple's
relationship had become turbulent, but their fresh parenthood carried them through another year.
Their second son, Dylan, was born on December 29, 1997. Before long, troubles in the couple's
relationship began bubbling back up to the surface. Anderson took full responsibility
for caring for the children, and Lee got jealous. According to the New York Post, Lee later said:
"When Dylan was born, I dropped down to No. 3.
Now I was full-on nonexistent. And I couldn't deal with that."
In 1998, Lee was arrested following an alleged physical altercation with Anderson
and was ultimately charged with six months in jail. According to the New York Post,
Anderson said at the time about Lee's arrest:
"I'm very proud of Tommy. I'm happy he took responsibility for this.
And I think it's the first step towards healing."
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's marriage was over when he was sent to jail in May 1998.
According to Hollywood Life, the couple's relationship was shaken by fights that even
upset their toddler-age children, which prompted Anderson to file for divorce. According to the
New York Post, Marilyn Minter, an artist who worked with Anderson in 2006, said:
"She said something about having bad taste in men. I thought she was pretty smart. She was single at
the time and [told] me how Tommy was such a terrible alcoholic [during their marriage].
That was why she had to end it. She said he was out of control [...] I was sympathetic."
Anderson and Lee discussed remarriage after he was released from jail. According to
Entertainment Weekly, Anderson said at the time:
"I picture Tommy and me ... old, toothless, on a bench somewhere with our tattoos."
Lee's alcoholism ultimately brought that image to a screeching halt. In October 2020,
Lee revealed in an interview with the New York Post that he had been sober for a year.
Both he and Anderson have remarried other people since their late-'90s split,
but it's their wild union that will go down in rock 'n' roll history.
Given Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's on-again off-again relationship, it was not a big surprise
when the actress revealed that the two were hooking up after they had divorced in 1998.
In an interview with BlackBook, she stressed that they were not back together, but also said,
"I sleep with him a lot, but we aren't together. How does
it go? If you can't be with the one you love, then f--- the one you're with."
But it was only the next year when the couple announced that they were
getting married for the second time in 2008.
"I believe in love. I don't like to be divorced. I don't like to be,
I mean I love to be married. The marriage part is difficult but I love the weddings."
Lee was very excited to give the relationship another shot and was happy
to have the whole family back together under one roof. He told Rolling Stone,
"We've only given it a try 800 times — 801, here we go."
Sadly, the optimism did not last long though as the couple divorced again in 2010.
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee have obviously cared deeply for each other,
yet one major issue that consistently formed a wedge between the two was his
out of control drinking. The situation gradually worsened until things came to a head when Tommy
got into a serious altercation with his son, Brandon Lee, in 2018. As reported by People,
the police arrived where the incident occurred at Tommy's home, but no arrests were made, while the
aging rockstar posted on Twitter that Brandon had knocked him out and then fled the scene.
Anderson was out of the country in France at the time but felt the need to clarify what was
going on from her perspective, placing the blame for the traumatic experience on her ex-husband's
struggle with alcoholism. In a statement posted on The Pamela Anderson Foundation, she said,
"I will never talk to Tommy again before he is sober and in his right mind. Though he's
made attempts to contact me. I have blocked him. It is impossible to reason with crazy."
She also stressed how proud she was of her sons,
who were both trying to help their father during the difficult period of his life,
and she believed that Brandon was not responsible for the fight erupting.
"They're both adults. Maybe Brandon more so."
Five years after Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson finalized their second divorce in 2010,
Anderson still spoke fondly about their relationship. She told People,
"There was Tommy and then there was nobody else. He was the love of my life. We had a
wild and crazy beginnings that was too much for both of us."
Clearly, a part of the actress will always be in love with the
troubled musician. Anderson even admitted on The Howard Stern Show:
"I've never been out of love with Tommy."
Stern then followed that up by saying the two seemed perfect for each other,
and if she agreed that meant they should have tried to stay together, to which Anderson replied,
"[We] probably should have. We probably should have stuck it out, I don't know."
However, she then went on to explain that too many bad things had happened
for them to ever consider getting back in a relationship again.
When showrunners Rob Siegel and D.V. DeVincentis began to develop the miniseries,
"Pam & Tommy," their main goal was to keep the story as accurate as possible,
which was difficult since neither celebrity that the story was based on wanted to be
involved with the project. So instead, the limited show was based on the account told
in an article published in Rolling Stone back in 2014. Siegel explained to Entertainment Weekly,
"We didn't make up a whole lot. Most of what you see in those eight episodes is
in that article. The basic plot beats are all straight from the article."
Once the show premiered, Pamela Anderson was not happy with the
results. Not only did close friends of the actress, like Courtney Love,
publicly state how upset Anderson was, but she herself made a post on Instagram that
a documentary with Netflix is in the works to tell the true story from her perspective.
Likewise, Lee's former Motley Crue bandmate, John Corabi, was also not pleased with the portrayals
and posted on Facebook that the show was wrong about most of it. The musician was especially
angered by the way Anderson would have to relive the trauma of the experience all over again,
and that her sons would have to live in the world where the fake Hollywood account existed.
Furthermore, since Corabi was there through a lot of the ordeal, he thought that the way
Tommy Lee was depicted was quite ridiculous, as they failed to get his personality right.
Following the difficult period when tensions were still high because of the fight between
Tommy Lee and Brandon Lee, the whole family was finally able to come together and make
amends. In November 2021, Brandon debuted his own clothing brand, Swingers Club,
in collaboration with Local Authority, and held a launch party at The Webster
Los Angeles. The style of the clothing line is inspired by preppy golf attire,
so the festivities were decorated with that theme, including indoor golf.
Pamela Anderson attended the event as well, along with Brandon's brother, Dylan Lee, and the
siblings' two girlfriends. Tommy also brought his current wife, Brittany Furlan, which was one
of the biggest signs that everyone involved had moved on from the past hostility and were ready to
heal their damaged relationships. One intriguing absence from the party was Anderson's new husband,
Dan Hayhurst, but that mystery was answered a couple months later when it was announced that
the couple had filed for divorce after only a little over a year of marriage.
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse,
you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.