Pamela Anderson is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood.
Ever since she was spotted on the huge jumbotron screen at a baseball game aged 21, her physical traits have been the overriding subject the world has focused on.
Now 57, the actress and modelis claiming back her life, her story and forging a new path in her career.
“I feel so free,” she tells Sky News during a conversation in a London hotel about her latest film The Last Showgirl.
“I write a lot of emotional journals and there’s a lot that you can get out. You can go to therapy, or you can talk to your best friend, but there’s nothing like an art project to express yourself and heal parts of yourself.”
Image: Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. Pic: Picturehouse Entertainment
The Last Showgirl follows a seasoned entertainer who has to plan for her future when her Las Vegas show abruptly ends after a 30-year run.
The role almost slipped from her fingers when her old agent passed on the script.
“I have a new agent now,” she says with a smile.
Image: Pic: Picturehouse Entertainment
It was her son Brandon who served as a catalyst in her career resurgence after stumbling upon the screenplay and showing it to his mother.
“My sons are so protective of me and their goal is just to say: ‘Mom, we just want you to be able to know that you focused on us as kids and we want you to have the opportunity to shine and to reach your potential as an actress’.”
She adds: “I do have a lot to give, so now I just feel so free. I couldn’t have done anything like this when I had kids because my focus was with them. Now that they’re grown and they’re doing well and they’re thriving, that gives me the opportunity to be able to play in this universe.”
The Canadian-American has been the victim of many harsh headlines over the years with her most challenging moments played out in front of the world.
One of the toughest moments, when her sex tape with her ex-husband Tommy Lee was leaked, ended up being made into its own TV series starring Oscar nominee Sebastian Stan and English actress Lily James.
Anderson had no input in the show and repeatedly called for it to be scrapped.
Image: Anderson as CJ Parker in Baywatch. Pic: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
Anderson says that despite the adversity and misogyny she has faced being in the public eye, she feels ready to take on the spotlight again. This time on her terms.
“It was hard for me decades ago, and now I can look at it as a learning experience. And it was a different time. I think that looking at it through my kids’ eyes was interesting.
“Talking to my adult children about having a mom who was, you know, objectified in some way and how that felt [for them] and how that shaped them and their experience growing up, being teased in school.”
Her sons, Brandon and Dylan, are now both in their late 20s.
Image: A make-up free Anderson dazzles on the BAFTA red carpet
Drawing similarities to her character Shelly in The Last Showgirl, Anderson says the film serves as a reflection of the sacrifices, external expectations and realities connected to being a woman and a mother.
“We’re doing the best we can with the tools that we have and what we’ve seen growing up. And there’s no perfect way to be a parent, there really isn’t – and especially in this industry.
“When I did Playboy, when I was in Baywatch, I wasn’t thinking about how it was affecting my kids. I was thinking about just keeping the lights on and living this exciting life and getting through it myself.
“But, you know, it affects everybody around you – your parents, your friends, your kids – and so to kind of look at it from that way [in The Last Showgirl] and to have empathy for the character of Shelly dealing with that… I had some experience to draw from.”
Image: The Last Showgirl. Pic: Roadside Attractions
The film also stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka as her close friends and co-workers in a fading corner of the Las Vegas strip.
Anderson adds of the film: “I think this can resonate with any working mom. We all carry this guilt and shame and wish we would have done this or that. And we have to be happy, too.”
The Last Showgirl is out in UK cinemas from Friday 28 February.
The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has warned of a musical “silence” that would come without the pubs and bars that give UK artists their first chance to perform.
Fresh from headlining Glastonburyin June, Healy is backing a new UK-wide festival which will see more than 2,000 gigs taking place across more than 1,000 “seed” venues in September.
The Seed Sounds Weekender aims to celebrate the hospitality sector hosting bands and singers just as they are starting out – and for some, before they go on to become global superstars.
Healy, who is an ambassador for the event, said in a statement to Sky News: “Local venues aren’t just where bands cut their teeth, they’re the foundation of any real culture.
“Without them, you don’t get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, or The 1975. You get silence.”
Oasis, currently making headlines thanks to their sold-out reunion tour, first played at Manchester’s Boardwalk club, which closed in 1999, and famously went on to play stadiums and their huge Knebworth gigs within the space of a few years.
Image: Oasis stars Liam and Noel Gallagher, pictured on stage at Wembley for their reunion tour, started out playing Manchester’s Boardwalk club. Pic: Lewis Evans
GigPig, the live music marketplace behind Seed Sounds, says the seed sector collectively hosts more than three million gigs annually, supports more than 43,000 active musicians, and contributes an estimated £2.4bn to the UK economy.
“The erosion of funding for seed and grassroots spaces is part of a wider liberal tendency to strip away the socially democratic infrastructure that actually makes art possible,” said Healy.
“What’s left is a cultural economy where only the privileged can afford to create, and where only immediately profitable art survives.”
He described the Seed Sounds Weekender as “a vital reminder that music doesn’t start in boardrooms or big arenas – it starts in back rooms, pubs, basements, and independent spaces run on love, grit, and belief in something bigger.”
The importance of funding for grassroots venues has been highlighted in the past few years, with more than 200 closing or stopping live music in 2023 and 2024, according to the Music Venue Trust. Sheffield’s well-known Leadmill venue saw its last gig in its current form in June, after losing a long-running eviction battle.
In May, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced the £85m Creative Foundations Fund to support arts venues across England.
But most seed venues – the smaller spaces in the hospitality sector that provide a platform before artists get to ticketed grassroots gigs or bigger stages – won’t qualify for the levy. GigPig is working to change this by formalising the seed music venue space as a recognised category.
“The UK’s seed venues are where music careers are born,” said GigPig co-founder Kit Muir-Rogers. “Collectively, this space promotes more music than any other in the live music business, yet it has gone overlooked and under-appreciated.”
The Seed Sounds Weekender takes place from 26-28 September and will partner with Uber to give attendees discounted rides to and from venues.
Tickets for most of the gigs will be free, with events taking place across 20 UK towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester, Newcastle and Southampton
Paul Gallagher, the older brother of Oasis stars Noel and Liam, has been charged with multiple offences including rape.
The Metropolitan Police said Gallagher, 59, of East Finchley, north London, has been charged with rape, coercive and controlling behaviour, three counts of sexual assault, three counts of intentional strangulation, two counts of making a threat to kill and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The offences are reported to have taken place between 2022 and 2024. The charges follow an investigation which began last year, the force added in a statement.
A woman is being supported by specially-trained officers, the statement continued.
Paul Gallagher, who is about one year older than Noel and seven years older than Liam, has never been involved in Oasis.
He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 27 August.
Gregg Wallace has spoken about his sacking from MasterChef after inappropriate behaviour while working for the BBC – but insisted he is “not a groper, a sex pest or a flasher”.
Wallace, 60, has apologised after a report, commissioned by the cooking show’s production company Banijay UK, found 45 out of 83 allegations were substantiated.
In an interview with The Sun, he said: “I know I have said things that offended people… I understand that now – and to anyone I have hurt, I am so sorry.
“I don’t expect anyone to have any sympathy with me but I don’t think I am a wrong ‘un.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Torode, who insisted he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged incident, has not had his contract for the show renewed.
Wallace has now defended Torode, saying: “I’ve known John for 30 years and he is not a racist.
More on Bbc
Related Topics:
“There is no way that man is a racist. No way. And my sympathies go out to John because I don’t want anybody to go through what I’ve been through.”
Image: Gregg Wallace has defended his former MasterChef co-host John Torode (left). File pic: PA
At one point, Wallace became tearful during the interview when describing the impact of the investigation on his family.
“I have seen myself written about in the same sentence as Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards, paedophiles and sex offenders. That is just so, so horrific.”
In respect to the specific allegation of unwanted touching, Wallace denied groping a woman and said that, while he was attempting to flirt with her, he did believe the contact it was consensual.
“She gave me her phone number. I considered that to be intimacy. It was 15 years ago. Me, drunk, at a party, with my hand on a girl’s bum,” he said.
He also accepted he had briefly appeared with a sock on his private parts in front of four colleagues in MasterChef studio. But he said his is not a flasher, and people were either “amused or bemused” but not distressed.
On the broader allegations about using inappropriate language, Wallace accepted the criticism and suggested that some of his conduct could be explained by his autism and his background.
“I know I am odd. I know I struggle to read people. I know people find me weird. Autism is a… registered disability. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
He also blamed his former career: “I’m a greengrocer from Peckham. I thrived in Covent Garden’s fruit and veg market. In that environment that is jovial and crude. It is learned behaviour.”
Wallace told the newspaper he is now scared to appear in public: “I go out now in a disguise – a baseball cap and sunglasses, I don’t want people to see me. I’m scared.”
On Wednesday, the BBC confirmed a series of MasterChef filmed last year, before allegations against presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were upheld, will still be broadcast.