“I wanted to share the attention I was getting with something more meaningful than my boyfriends and my boobs”
It’s hard to introduce Pamela Anderson: she is nebulous and ethereal and surprising. She may have appeared on the cover of Playboy more than any other model, but for the past 20 years has also been a very public activist for countless causes.
She has touched on many, varied issues with the work of her Pamela Anderson Foundation, from stripping down to her undies for Peta’s notorious “I’d rather go naked” campaign, to writing letters to Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, to protesting against seal-hunting, to meeting with Kremlin officials to discuss animal welfare, to becoming a spokesperson for Aids, to supporting France’s gilets jaunes and the German Diem25 campaign for a pan-European political movement. In her words, she just wants to help. Speaking on the phone, she talks eloquently and passionately about her projects, excited at the prospect of sharing information on her causes. She is decidedly less interested, though, in her de facto celebrity status – as the 1990s Baywatch pin-up CJ Parker, one of the most iconic characters of the decade – but rather wants to focus on her philanthropic efforts. “I’d be doing it anyway, even if I wasn’t famous,” she says. It’s easy to believe her, too.