Pamela Anderson had an interesting love story, even by Hollywood standards. Out of the many husbands she had, only one was for a month and two were short-lived. Tommy Lee, the Motley Crue singer, served six months imprisonment for beating Anderson.
Now it’s been announced that she’s divorcing her latest Mr Right, bodyguard Dan Hayhurst, after barely a year of marriage, which was spent cloistered in lockdown at her modest property on Vancouver Island, Canada.
Last year, she promised that Hayhurst would be her happiness.
Lorraine Kelly even conducted a home toe curling interview from the marital bed.
According to sources, Anderson is still angry at the tape and its focus. It could have had an impact on Anderson’s personal happiness.
Pammi’s friends say the split is simply down to a ‘pandemic whirlwind that petered out’, but for her there is surely a sense of being haunted for 27 years by a sex tape which made her an international joke. It casts an eerie shadow for an eight minute clip.
At 54 years old, she feels robbed, exploited, and global shamed. Disney + will release a miniseries called Pam And Tommy next month, which is a huge-money comedy drama.
According to reports, Anderson remains angry and embarrassed about the tape’s focus and continues to be an international pinup in Baywatch. It could have had an impact on Anderson’s personal happiness.
It can’t have helped. It is clear that she has not been able to communicate with the producers, even sweetly phrased requests by Lily James who plays her role.
James said: ‘I was really hopeful that she would be involved. My sole intention was to take care of the story and to play Pamela authentically.’ Writer Rob Siegel said: ‘She’s chosen not to engage, so we’ve respected her desire not to be involved.’
This month Pamela flew to Malibu, California, and although her publicist will not comment, it seems she is contemplating taking some kind of action to try to spike the filmmakers’ guns.
She says she has never seen the tape and made ‘not one dollar’ from it. Asked about it in 2020, she grimaced: ‘It is not a sex tape. It was made on a couple of vacations that we were naked on.’
The actress playing her has refused to interact with show producers. She turned a blind ear to even sweetly-framed requests from Lily James.
Her longstanding friend, singer Courtney Love, comments that the focus on it is ‘disgusting’ and adds: ‘It destroyed my friend Pamela’s life. Utterly.’ She calls the show a ‘piece of s***’ and says: ‘Shame on Lily James.’
By contrast Lee, who was Anderson’s husband and a byword for debauchery when the tape was made, thinks it is all great sport. Brittany Furlan, a TikTok influencer, is his wife and finds this focus quite amusing.
He told friend Guerin Swing: ‘Let everyone know we did it first. We did it first, before the Kardashians and before anybody else. We broke the internet first.’
Lee is proud of his strong reputation. He is a shabby, tattooed man who enjoys trimming bonsai trees, and making jokes that his wife, much younger, films. They tend to involve Lee as a punchline such as ‘accidentally’ falling into their swimming pool.
Tommy and Pamela have been making a practice of matrimony since their split. This has resulted in six more trips down the aisle. They’ve also faced each other in court over domestic abuse and continue to trade barbs about their marriage.
In November 1994, the couple first met at nightclub Sanctuary. Anderson was at the height of her fame as Casey Jean ‘CJ’ Parker in U.S. lifeguard drama Baywatch, being watched in 100 countries by a billion viewers. CJ had an interest in crystals and new age thinking, which Anderson did too, but it might not have been that which attracted Tommy that night after he’d taken ecstasy and swigged champagne. Pamela, who part-owned the club, sent over schnapps to Lee, who was famous as heavy rock group Motley Crue’s drummer and one-time husband of actress Heather Locklear.
She recalled, ‘He came up, grabbed me and licked my face. He seemed like a nice, cool and friendly guy to me. I gave him my number.’
He called her six times over the following weeks, leaving numerous messages on her answering machine. Finally, they were able to speak and she said she was headed for Cancun, Mexico. He flew her to the airport and managed to track her down. That night in February 1995 they partied in the famous Señor Frogs bar. They exchanged their marriage vows at the beach in 96 hours. A white bikini was worn by the bride. ‘It really was love at first sight,’ she later said.
She had ‘Tommy’ inked on her finger instead of a ring. Lee had ‘Pamela’ inked on his penis. He and his wife settled in Malibu. The house was extravagantly restored without regard to money or taste. A huge ‘heaven and hell’ mural was painted in the elevator shaft, a sex swing hung above a white baby grand piano in the living room. Lee’s pal and interior designer Swing said: ‘They spent money like they hated it.’
Anderson was in a painful miscarriage within months and created the movie Barb Wire. Reports circulated that her jealous husband wouldn’t let anyone near her on set. While on honeymoon in Mexico, the couple shot a 54-minute home video, mostly just ‘goofing about’ but including that eight minutes of sex.
The couple filed a police report stating that the tape was found in their safe with guns, guns and a Rolex. They also had a Cartier gold-and diamond watch, as well as a Rolex and a Rolex.
Rand Gauthier stole the safe in October 1995. He had previously been fired by Rand Gauthier and thought they owed money. Seth Rogen, comedian, plays him in this miniseries.
Gauthier said that after bypassing security, he pulled the safe (6ft x 3ftx4ft) out of his garage on a wheel cart in the middle of the night. He had no idea of its contents until he opened it and later recalled thinking: ‘We put it in (the video machine) and see what it is, and of course, cha-ching! We see dollar signs flying before our eyes. But we’re going, this is the kind of thing people will get killed over.’
Lucky for us, Gauthier was aware of the sex industry, having appeared in 75 porn movies. One time he dated Wendy Whoppers who he paid 34H implants. He offered the tape to ‘Uncle Miltie’ Ingley, a porn studio owner. They created a few copies of the Hi8 cassette and destroyed it.
Miltie offered the tape to various companies who all turned it down, knowing that he didn’t have the consent of Anderson or Lee. With the assistance of Gauthier, he received $50,000 from a mob boss. The VHS video was available for purchase on several websites that cost $59.99.
Daily Mail reported in December 1995 that Anderson and Lee were having sex. The couple learned about the safe’s theft for the first time. The couple filed a police report, and Anthony Pellicano was hired as a private investigator.
The couple brought a civil suit against $10 million worth of people, Penthouse magazine included, for a claim that they had a copy. Every other defendant in the lawsuit denied possessing a copy.
The tape sellers were busy placing orders for hundreds of thousands. Gauthier delivered hundreds of tapes daily to the Post Office.
Finally, Seth Warshavsky (an internet genius) announced that he would broadcast the video online.
An injunction request was denied by a judge. Anderson and Lee decided to reach an agreement with Warshavsky. They believed that he could show the document online, but they would not be able to sell it.
It seems that they also underestimated the potential of the internet. In November 1997, the couple signed the copyright over to him, after which point Warshavsky’s Club Love sold access to the tape. Club Love made copies on VHS.
Anderson and Lee both deny that they ever made a profit. What’s the point of this deal? Anderson said: ‘We made a deal to stop all the shenanigans. Seven months pregnant, the stress had a negative effect on my pregnancy. I thought, I’m not going to court any more. I’m not being deposed any more by these horny weird lawyer men. I don’t want to talk about my vagina any more.’
It seems that the legal proceedings have accelerated the divorce. Lee said in 2004: ‘Not being able to do anything about the tape was adding so much frustration and stress to our relationship. It was just consuming us.’
He also struggled with being ‘demoted’ after the birth of son Brandon in June 1996. Anderson divorced just five months after the birth of Brandon. The couple reconciled, and Dylan was born December 1997.
Lee said: ‘Pamela and I got busy having kids so quickly that we never gave ourselves a chance to build a solid relationship. I asked her much later, “Why didn’t we work on our relationship more?”
“We couldn’t,” she replied. “I was pregnant the whole time.”’ He added: ‘When Dylan was born, I dropped down to No.3. Now, I was completely inexistent. And I couldn’t deal with that.’
Anderson was alleged to have punch Lee in the face during a fight that took place in 1998. Anderson grabbed Lee’s arm, and kicked the backside. Anderson fell onto a chalkboard, toreing a nail. She filed for divorce shortly afterward. Lee was sentenced in May 1998 to six months imprisonment after pleading no contest to the felony spousal battery.
A few years later Lee said: ‘I couldn’t understand why Pamela had followed through with pressing charges. It was likely she was scared of me and believed I was some insane, violent monster. She probably believed she was doing right by the children and wanted an easy solution to a complicated situation. As much as I loved Pamela, she had a problem dealing with things.’
The couple discussed remarriage in 1999, with Pamela saying: ‘I picture Tommy and me . . . old, toothless, on a bench somewhere with our tattoos.’ Reason prevailed the following year. Lee stated that the couple was back together, and she soon married another person.
After a fight with Tommy, son Brandon got into an altercation and hostilities started to resume in 2018. Pam wrote, ‘alcoholism is the devil’ and described her former husband as ‘a disaster spinning out of control’.
Lee was angry that she had spoken about the domestic abuse he visited on her and said: ‘You’d think she’d find something new to discuss instead of rehashing old s*** but I guess she has nothing else going on and needs attention.’
He sees both of his grown-up sons. This year, they were there for Thanksgiving. Lee, now 59 years old, was previously married two times before he got engaged to Anderson. In 2019, he wed Ms Furlan (35). He said: ‘My face often hurts from laughing so much from all the fun we have. She has that wonderful gift of laughter and I think that’s such an underrated quality in people.’
Pamela (53), has been married six more times. In 2006, Pamela married Kid Rock. This marriage lasted just two months. She then married poker player Rick Salomon twice — once in 2007 and again in 2014.
In January 2020 she married film producer Jon Peters — famous for Flashdance and A Star Is Born —who is 22 years her senior. She wrote on Twitter: ‘We love each other without conditions. I’m a lucky woman. Proof God has a plan.’ They announced their split the next month.
She married Hayhurst on Christmas Eve 2020, a handyman who worked at her Vancouver Island house. Wearing wellies and a Cinderella-style dress, the bride promised that this was her last wedding.
While she lives modestly, she supports her charity foundation and other causes such as veganism.
Meanwhile, Pam And Tommy is said to be costing £35 million. This eight-part series, which consists of eight episodes, is cinematic in scope and ambition.
Craig Gillespie is the director. He’s best-known for his Oscar-winning film I Tonya. The stars, Lily James and Sebastian Stan, are reportedly getting £100,000 plus per episode.
James wears an expensive prosthetic chest plate to mimic Pamela’s famous breasts. A penis animatronic was created by the film makers at great cost.
You can see why Pamela Anderson thinks there’s not much funny about that.
On February 2, Pam and Tommy will begin Disney+.