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VANCOUVER — If you were to go out and look for the quintessential pin-up California sunshine girl, you couldn’t do better than Pamela Anderson.
With a mane of bouncing blonde hair, a Barbie doll shape and perfectly plucked eyebrows, Anderson still fits the bill at 41.
Yet she wants the world to know she is Madam Ordinary, the type of woman who walks her kids to school and does her own laundry and cleaning.
Hence this walking contradiction, who is both Hollywood icon and small-town Vancouver Island girl, has allowed cameras into her life to discover what it is like to be one of the most recognizable faces on the planet as well as a Malibu mom.
The result is a television series called Pam: Girl on the Loose which begins airing tonight at 10 p.m. on the Everything Entertainment channel.
In advance of the show, Anderson was giving interviews at the Four Seasons Hotel. She arrived wearing a partially undone blouse that hugged her curvaceous figure, short shorts and high heels. She was like a colt - skittish, long-legged, darting in odd directions at every question with doe-like eyes that startled easily.
While here, she performed a stunt for PETA and for animal rights, a subject near and dear to her heart. Greeted with cheers from a gathered crowd, she stepped into a nearby KFC chicken place at lunch time to check out their new faux-chicken vegetarian sandwich.
Anderson found the experience delicious. She is proud of the Canadian KFCs for being the first in the world to adopt more humane ways of killing chickens and to offer the veggie sandwich. “I didn’t think I would ever walk into a KFC, but here we go,” she said in advance of her little side trip.
She became a vegetarian around the age of 10 when her father, then a hunter, told her the one place she should never go was the pumphouse. So, of course, she went there. “There was a dead deer hanging upside down, no head, blood dripping into a bucket. I stomped up and down and then I became an activist. No hunting. No meat.”
She said she hopped onto the PETA bandwagon when she was a star in the show Baywatch. She told the stunt-inclined animal-rights group, “Please give me something important to talk about as I’m sick of talking about my boobs and my boyfriends.”
In our interview, she agreed to talk about the latter but not the former. “That’s old news,” she said dismissively, although in fairness, Anderson seems willing to answer almost any question you lob at her. There has been much news over the years over Anderson’s breast implants and removal thereof. It is difficult to say exactly where she stands on that front.
But on the boyfriend front, she has moved back in with first husband Tommy Lee with whom she had her two sons, Brandon, age 12, and Dylon, age 10, although here, too, things are unclear.
“I am actually staying at his house right now while my house is being built. We’re really good friends. We really like being together.” She added, “I have been working and I’m not really dating. Just being with the boys and working is enough.”
She said the filming of the television series kind of changed things with Lee. “I’m not as mad at Tommy anymore because he was actually around a lot more than I thought.”
Anderson, who is known for tumultuous relationships, has been married three times. The first time to Lee with whom she divorced in 1998, the second time to Kid Rock and the third to Rick Salomon although she claims the third wasn’t a real marriage as it ended in an annulment. She said in the interview she has definite plans to marry again.
To whom? “Oh, someone tall, dark, tattooed, good breeding stock, good teeth.”
Several things became clear from the interview - Anderson remains an ardent Canadian and is a devoted mother, a Christian and a Barack Obama fan.
“My kids surf. They’re athletes. They play every single sport. I’m at all the games. I’m still a soccer mom. I still bring the cut oranges to the soccer games and keep score at baseball games. I’m just like everybody else. I do safety patrol at school in a neon vest. I don’t have a nanny or anything like that.”
She is so fond of her childhood in Ladysmith that she is trying to recreate a similar environment in Malibu. “I lived in a tiny little house in Ladysmith, a kind of little shack on the beach. I have kind of created that same thing not too much bigger in Malibu on the beach.”
She is developing a property in the Vancouver Island community and still has lots of family there so she is back and forth quite a lot, bringing her kids along whenever possible. “Canadian people are good, plus I feel so comfortable here and it’s just better for them.” She is hoping to partly move back to the island one day although she has to play it by ear with her kids. “It’s refreshing to come home. There are a lot of please and thank-yous. People forget about that in Los Angeles.”
Back in Malibu, she does “a Bible study walk” with her church minister who she describes as a great mentor in her children’s lives. “I love any kind of religion but I would call myself a Christian.”
On the work front, she is developing an all-natural line of lotions, oils and skin-care products, eschewing any film roles or work in Las Vegas because that would take her away from her kids and the beach. “I’m a water girl. I’m West Coast all the way.”
Near the end of the interview, we talk about all the Hollywood stars who end up with nervous breakdowns and in rehab. “No rehab for me. Can you believe it?” she says laughing. “My kids have probably saved my life.”
She says she is lucky to have them, but she doesn’t mind being seen a sex symbol, too, which of course she is. She has appeared on the cover of Playboy 11 times.
Eleven times!
“It could be worse. I could not be viewed as a sex symbol and that would be terrible.” She is joking, of course. Or is she? As the show tries to demonstrate, there’s more to Pamela Anderson than meets the eye.
YZacharias@png.canwest.com