How many times has Pamela Anderson been married at this point?
It seems like heartbreak follows her everywhere she goes.
Despite being one of the biggest stars of the '90s, the model, actress and activist
has faced plenty of setbacks.
Pamela Anderson was born in Ladysmith, Canada in 1967.
In a 2014 speech at the Cannes Film Festival, she noted that she hardly lived in the lap
of luxury.
Her father struggled with alcoholism, and her deeply overworked mother was struggling
to keep it together.
Anderson said,
"My mom was always crying.
Dad didn't always come home, leaving us in tremendous pain and worry."
Though Anderson says her parents did their best to provide a safe environment for her,
the fact that they struggled in their own lives meant that they were ultimately unable
to shield her from the misfortunes of life.
Unfortunately, Anderson got to experience more than her share of bad things — such
as sexual abuse — at an early age, and in order to avoid burdening her mother any further,
she chose to keep her troubles to herself.
In 2014, Anderson revealed that she's a victim of multiple cases of sexual abuse.
The first of these incidents came from her babysitter when she was just 6 years old,
and the next culprit was the older brother of a friend's boyfriend when she was 12.
If that wasn't awful enough, she was also assaulted by her boyfriend and his six friends
during her school years.
These terrifying experiences, combined with the fact that her parents meant well but were
unable to provide her an adequate safe space, left her feeling so alone with her troubles
that she's implied she contemplated some pretty dark things at the time.
Anderson described her state of mind at this point of her life in a 2014 speech, saying,
"Needless to say I had a hard time trusting humans — I just wanted off this earth.
I wasn't sure why I was alive."
"I learned to never put myself in those situations again."
Pamela Anderson's most famous relationship was with Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.
The pair met each other at a New Year's Eve party at the end of 1994, and married in February
1995 after a short — and what would turn out to be characteristically chaotic — courtship
period.
The curious pair was seemingly very happy together; however, for a number of reasons
things turned sour for the couple.
Apart from constant tabloid attention, a stolen sex tape, and a miscarriage, their relationship
was strained by the births of their two sons.
Anderson's focus on motherhood shifted attention from Lee, who found it a hard pill to swallow,
especially after his second son was born, according to the 2001 Mötley Crüe memoir
"The Dirt." Lee wrote,
"When Dylan was born, I dropped down to No. 3.
Now I was full-on nonexistent.
And I couldn't deal with that."
Things culminated in 1998, when Lee was arrested for allegedly physically abusing Anderson
— while she was breastfeeding their younger child, no less.
She filed for divorce, and he received a six-month jail sentence for spousal abuse, serving four.
They eventually reconciled and got together again in 2008, but broke up in 2010.
"You divorced Tommy Lee, and then you married him again?"
"I do that."
Anderson revealed in 2002 that contact with Tommy Lee's blood gave her Hepatitis C, which
can lead to dangerous ailments that range from cancer to cirrhosis.
Anderson's statement read, in part,
"I contracted Hepatitis C while sharing a tattoo needle with my ex-husband, Tommy Lee.
Tommy has the disease and never disclosed it to me during our marriage."
Hepatitis C can be a relatively short and easy condition, but apparently, Anderson wasn't
quite so lucky.
According to People magazine, she struggled with the ailment for no less than 16 years.
In 2015, a new treatment finally helped her conquer the disease.
"Twenty years ago, when they told me I had the disease, they told me I'd only live ten
years."
Though she was originally horrified by the diagnosis, and it couldn't have been easy
to carry that weight for over a decade and a half, she ultimately survived with no ill
effects — something she attributes to the fact that she was able to find the right treatment
in time.
Anderson told People in 2015,
"I don't have any liver damage and I don't have any side effects.
I'm living my life the way I want to, but it could have eventually have caused me some
problems, and so it was a real blessing that I was able to get the medicine."
During the heyday of her "Baywatch" fame, Pamela Anderson became an icon for plastic
surgery, and it wasn't uncommon for women to use her as a measuring stick for their
own cosmetic operations.
Dr. Mark Berman of Santa Monica, California described her influence to ABC News in 2001,
saying,
"Pamela Anderson Lee became a reference point.
Some people want to look exactly like her.
Others want to make sure they don't get that artificial look."
Anderson's chest may have divided opinion, but one thing is certain: It became an iconic
part of her image.
In fact, it can be easy to forget that she actually got her famous implants removed all
the way back in 1999.
She told the New York Post at the time,
"I just didn't feel like it looked very good.
I was really kind of being self-conscious of it."
In a 2016 interview with W magazine, Anderson reflected on aspects of aging and beauty,
and revealed that her opinions about her augmentations have not exactly changed since she got her
implants removed.
When the interviewer asked her if she has any issues with "anything she's done in the
name of beauty," Anderson immediately singled out her breasts with a gesture, commenting,
"Not that we need to point it out."
As depicted in the Hulu drama "Pam and Tommy," the most famous and public of Pamela Anderson's
misfortunes is the viral fame of her intimate tape with husband Tommy Lee, allegedly stolen
by an irate ex-contractor in 1995.
After Anderson and Lee learned of the situation, they made attempts to reclaim the tape.
Unfortunately, the situation coincided with the internet's emergence as a global communication
tool, and once the tape made its way online, it went viral.
A couple of years after the fact, Anderson and Lee ended up agreeing on a settlement
that signed away their copyright to the home tape.
Unfortunately, they failed to fully realize the ramifications of the deal they made with
internet entrepreneur Seth Warshavsky, and it resulted in both internet distribution
and physical copies of the video, which sold by the truckload.
According to Anderson, she chose the settlement option because she was simply too exhausted
to continue fighting.
She told Andy Cohen in 2015,
"I've never seen [the video].
[...] I made not one dollar, no.
It was stolen property.
We made a deal to stop the shenanigans.
I was seven months pregnant with Dylan and I was thinking it was affecting the pregnancy,
the stress, and I said, 'I'm not going to court anymore.'"
Pamela Anderson's most famous sex tape might be the one featuring her and Tommy Lee, but
as the Los Angeles Times tells us, it wasn't the only one.
In 1998 — shortly after Anderson and Lee had reached a settlement about the rights
of their tape — Anderson's former boyfriend, singer Bret Michaels of the band Poison, filed
an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the internet company holding a tape with him in
it, with the allegation that the leaked copy was Anderson's.
According to the BBC, the saga of the Anderson-Michaels video ended much like one concerning the Anderson-Lee
video — with a settlement with the man holding the affronting copy of the video, Internet
Entertainment Group owner Seth Warshavsky.
However, while the details of the latter remain somewhat murky and Anderson has insisted that
she never made any money off it, this court battle was far more successful from Anderson's
standpoint.
Not only did she and Michaels manage to block the distribution and force the Internet Entertainment
Group to destroy its copies of the tape, but they also reportedly received a seven-figure
settlement sum.
Julian Assange has been in trouble with the authorities since his website Wikileaks started
releasing a great number of classified documents.
A wanted man in the U.S., Assange spent seven years in the embassy of Ecuador in London,
and in 2019, he was caught by British authorities and sent to prison.
There, he's fighting extradition to the U.S., where he could face a prison sentence that
would lock him up for the rest of his life.
Assange has personally noted that the whole ordeal has not been easy on him, and in both
January 2021 and January 2022, British courts have ruled that his ailing mental health would
make extradition risky.
One of Assange's staunchest allies has been none other than Pamela Anderson, who considers
him a close friend.
Anderson has expressed worry for Assange's health plights a number of times, including
a 2019 appearance on "The View."
"His health is really deteriorating.
He has lost about 30 pounds I think since I saw him, and he was very thin at that point."
According to ABC News, Pamela Anderson became part of the "celebrities in trouble with the
IRS" club in 2010, when news broke that her reported tax debt was no less than $493,144.
In 2012, reports emerged that Anderson once again owed the taxman – this time, a total
of over $370,000 — but as the actress herself told the Daily Mail, she wasn't purposefully
dodging her responsibilities as a taxpayer.
She told the tabloid,
"I'm not trying to avoid any tax obligation.
Certain events occurred, outside of my control, which caused this temporary but embarrassing
situation.
All of my tax obligations will be resolved in the very near future."
Judging by the fact that there have been no reports of Anderson's unpaid taxes since these
incidents, it appears that she's kept her word.
In 2006, Pamela Anderson entered her second rock star marriage when she tied the knot
with rap-rocker Kid Rock.
However, this union ended even more quickly than her marriage with Tommy Lee, seeing as
she filed for divorce that very same year.
In a 2007 interview with Rolling Stone, Kid Rock had some fairly unsavory comments about
his ex-wife, including an insinuation that she faked a miscarriage to get back at him
during a fight.
Anderson, on the other hand, has chosen to avoid elaborating on exactly what caused the
split between the two, writing on her website,
"I'd hate to point out habits I had a hard time with.
They are personal to him and that's why we are not together."
As sources told the New York Post at the time, these habits may have included Kid Rock's
jealousy and anger issues, which were allegedly on full display during a screening of the
Sacha Baron Cohen hit comedy "Borat," in which Anderson appears as the object of the main
character's affections.
Reportedly, Kid Rock didn't take this well, and screamed at Anderson in front of several
people.
In 2019, Cohen himself confirmed this version of events to The Daily Beast's Last Laugh
podcast.
Pamela Anderson's best-known marriages are with musicians Tommy Lee and Kid Rock, but
she also has three other ex-husbands.
Apart from her much-publicized rock star marriages, her most tumultuous one has been with poker
player Rick Salomon, whom she's married and divorced two different times.
They first married in 2007, but the marriage was annulled in early 2008.
They gave it another go in 2014, but after six months, she filed for divorce.
After Salomon, Anderson's next marriage appeared to be a brief, 12-day union with producer
Jon Peters in 2020 — though, as Anderson later revealed, they weren't legally married.
Most recently, Anderson married her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst in late 2020, then filed for
divorce in January 2022.
Anderson has also had long-term relationships that didn't lead to marriage, including one
with French soccer player Adil Rami, whom she dated for two years.
In 2019, Anderson announced the split in a lengthy Instagram missive, making allegations
of two-timing and abuse against Rami.
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.