Pamela Anderson Returns to Her Roots

Over the past few years, Pamela Anderson has had more time to contemplate life. That is, until things kicked into high gear again—but more on that later. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, she moved from France, sold her house in Malibu, and headed north to the small town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where she was born and raised. She hunkered down with her two grown sons, Brandon and Dylan. She bought her grandmother’s old motel, renovated it, and set up her parents there. A lifelong cook, she perfected her baking skills. She reclaimed and expanded her grandfather’s garden on the same land where she had run barefoot as a self-described wild child. It’s the site of both her greatest childhood joys and harrowing traumas, which she describes candidly in her 2023 autobiography, Love, Pamela, and Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story. Almost poetically, for Pamela has journaled and written poetry her whole life, she has reclaimed her true self and her youthful creativity on the exact spot where they were born. When I had the chance to sit with her and talk over Zoom recently, our conversation quickly moved beyond her new cookbook, I Love You (due out in October), to all aspects of life—and her ability to find the deepest of meanings in even the tiniest of seeds.

At Home on Location

When she’s not at home, Pamela finds ways to bring a sense of home along with her.

Q: Pamela, I want to talk about what home means to you, which is currently Vancouver Island, where you grew up. When you’re not there, what do you do to make yourself feel at home?

I’m on location in Atlanta filming a movie right now [costarring with Liam Neeson in a reboot of The Naked Gun], so what I’ve been doing all morning is baking. That’s what sustains me and gives me a feeling of home while I’m here. I’m always taking in banana bread and muffins to the set for the crew. I’ve also created a new sourdough starter here—her name is Vixen, and she’s doing so well. I have another one back home called Astrid, and she’s in the fridge waiting for me to return. This bread thing is such a meditation for me. You’re always on the search for the best loaf and it never comes. There’s something about it that I compare to giving birth. If all those other people have done it, then so can I. Baking teaches patience. I’ve come to realize there’s so much about cooking that is good for you. If you like to cook, you’re good at lots of things.

Q: I tried the starter thing during the pandemic, and I couldn’t keep up with it. It was such a responsibility. 

Right. It’s a responsibility, but I like responsibility. It’s good for me. I need a bit of a routine. But it wasn’t a lockdown thing. My son’s girlfriend taught me and then it was off to the races. The crew is always looking for me when I arrive on set because I bring in loaves of bread tied with twine and maybe a gardenia. Presentation is everything for me. Little things like that are helpful when you’re working such long hours and working nights.

The Journey Home Planted New Seeds

The return to Vancouver Island inspired many new projects never foreseen.

Q: How and why did you return to Canada?

A few years back, I kind of gave up at some point and needed a change. I thought, Well, I guess that’s just what people think of me. I was not in a good space when I moved back to Canada. I don’t know what happened over the last few decades, but I feel now so far removed from the image of who I was. I felt very sad and lonely. I didn’t feel just misunderstood, I felt like I had really screwed up, that my whole life was a bundle of mistakes. I was hard on myself, and I thought I put my family through a lot and put my kids through so much. I came to a point where I decided to move home and disappear and get into my garden. And when I started building the garden, it was really like a metaphor of putting my life back together. I began planting seeds, and the smallest things became really profound.

Q: How did your love of gardening begin?

It comes from my grandfather Herman. He was really interesting and the closest person to me as a child. He was very much into mythology and fairy tales, and we always spoke about them when I was little. He would put little mirrors around in the garden, and he told me that was a way I could catch a glimpse of fairies and elves. I have a little collection of marbles and little toys that I still find in the garden. And I think, Did I put those there as a child for my future self? Believe me, I’ve gone crazy with all this [laughs]. Do you realize that this place that I bought from my grandmother is the same place my parents brought me home from the hospital when I was born? There were nine cabins, and we lived in cabin six. This is the first place my feet touched the actual soil.

Q: So you moved during lockdown? That was a period of transformation for a lot of people.

It was at the very beginning and during lockdown. Before that, I was in France for two years, living in Marseille, and then I flew home to L.A. then up to Canada. I bought the property and started renovating it. I mean, you should see the before pictures. It was decayed and rotten to the ground. I lived in another little house on the beach that I had that was livable.

It was weird going home, because it felt like it was the end, not the real end or anything too dramatic. But I thought, OK, I’m going home, and I don’t know what I’m doing.

It took me a couple years of transitioning and thinking. I was finally able to sit with myself. There was nothing else to do but write a lot. I wrote my memoir on that property. Brandon was with me coproducing the Netflix documentary and helping me put the pieces of my former life together. We were going through all my journals, which were in storage. That was painful to me. I didn’t plan on this whole healing experience, but as the days went on, it’s what happened. It was like I went back home to “face it and erase it,” as they say, to face things from back then that weren’t very comfortable. That brought everything rushing back. I slowly started working through it while putting all my heart and soul into my garden.

Cooking Up Creative Projects with Family

Family members have been key players in the new projects Pamela is taking on—cookbooks, documentaries, and more.

Q: You’ve mentioned how the ethnic heritage of your ancestors influenced your cooking. Is it mainly Finnish?

Yes, Hyytiäinen is my real last name. My grandfather’s father came over, so it was a while ago. They were all loggers and danced on treetops 100 feet in the air. My grandfather told me the trees spoke to him, and he really ingrained in me his love of nature. I even spoke Finnish with him. I can’t tell you a word now. But I used to carry my little Finnish dictionary around and we’d speak Finnish—though at first I thought it was more of our own secret language.

Q: What motivated the cookbook? Because some people will say right off the bat, why would, or even should, Pamela Anderson do a cookbook?

The cookbook started out as a housewarming gift for my sons. I remember my mom used to have these recipe cards in a box. I decided I had to find the ultimate recipe card box. I found one and started printing out these cards of all our family recipes—but I made them plant-based. I’ve taken a lot of my family recipes that come from my parents’ Northern and Eastern European backgrounds. A lot of probiotics and cabbage rolls and soups and pickled things. These are things I love; these are my comfort foods. The box was for the boys, who had just bought a house together, and their girlfriends, all four of them. Of course, my son Brandon, being the businessman, said, “This is a book, Mom.” And so we did it and titled the book I Love You since that was engraved on the recipe box.

Obviously, I’ve never done a cookbook before. I wasn’t sure if anyone would even buy it. I’m a positive person, I am. But I definitely had a low where I thought, Where do I even start with this kind of project? People have this pneumatic kind of image of me from Playboy to Baywatch, to my rock ’n’ roll type of husbands, to everything else. And as much as I threw every dinner party and cooked all those meals for family and my kids, it wasn’t what was seen publicly. But I also played into the image that was created around me. I’m glad I did all that, but I’m really glad I’m where I am now. I think the most important part is, I made it through all of it. And now it’s such a relief that I get to be myself and enjoy this time.

Q: Doing a cookbook is hard. It’s a mountain, right? What was the hardest part for you?

There were so many things I didn’t know about writing a cookbook. I wrote my memoir without a collaborator or ghostwriter, only my editor. I thought I could do anything, but, I mean, jeez, a cookbook is a whole other thing. I had a million recipes, and then we tested and edited them down. I am very particular about presentation, how food is presented, so I was very happy to work with Ditte Isager, the book’s photographer. She’s now like my soul sister and the whole book team was really wonderful.

Q: How do you describe the recipes in the book? Do you call them vegan or plant-based?

I’m trying not to call them anything. Because I feel like that limits us to the vegan section of the cookbook shelf. Also, I don’t want to tell people how to eat or what to do. This is the food that makes me feel the best. If it’s either for compassionate reasons or for vitality reasons, health reasons, or whatever it is, this is the diet that I’ve come to embrace and love. I think it’s a little bit intimidating for most people to think they’re going to change their diet. Plus, do you really want to be the annoying vegan coming to dinner—no one knows what to cook for you, blah, blah, blah. But things are changing, and people are getting more comfortable with veganism. I’ve been vegan for a long time, so my book is a celebration of vegetables, of love, of family. My kids aren’t vegan, and I’m not opposed to cooking things that aren’t, but I eat this way, and I found the more I allowed myself to experiment, the more I learned.

Q: Who were your primary food influences as a young person? I remember reading in your memoir that you always wanted to cook for yourself from an early age.

A: My Auntie Vie was a great influence on me because she always had the zest for life. She even wrote a little book called From Pickles to Pearls a few years ago. She’s really funny and wanted me to do Dancing with the Stars for the longest time. I promised her I would do it. When I told the producers, they filmed her and she became kind of a local star. Back when I was a kid, she knew how to set a beautiful table. She knew how to have fun. She’d spike everyone’s drinks with Bailey’s. There was never a bad time. We made pickles and mustards together—she won all the awards on the island for her pickles, or she’d be the winner of the poutine contest. She had that kind of style where her outfit would match her car.

Q: Was she someone who taught you about style and that presentation matters?

A: Yes and about having a good time and being kind and funny. But I also had a neighbor family who influenced me a lot. My dad loves basic hot dogs and TV dinners and all that kind of stuff, but my neighbors lived differently, and I was at their house a lot with Mom and Dad working. That was when I saw a salad for the first time. I opened the fridge and locked eyes with this beautifully arranged plate of greenery, and I was like “Gosh, what is that? Don’t vegetables come from a can?”

Q: It seems from the documentary and the memoir that you’re very close to your two sons, Brandon and Dylan. They seem very supportive of you.

Yes, my kids are old enough now to understand the big picture. They look at me and say, “Mom, this is your time.” Of course, over the years, as they learned about things in my past, both age-appropriate and not age-appropriate, unfortunately, they thought I was taken advantage of in some ways. They told me, “Whatever you’ve created by being you, just keep being you. We’re going to try and find ways for you to keep doing what you love but also sharing it with people in a way where it benefits you too. You can create a life. You can keep writing. You can keep doing all the things you love.” My sons are young, bold, hardworking men. They’re ambitious, they’re talented, they’re creative, they’re gentlemen, and they’re good cooks.

Q: I remember a scene in your documentary where you brought out boxes of journals. Have you written in notebooks your whole life?

There are yellow legal pads everywhere. I write all the time. I do a Substack newsletter called The Open Journal, which is nice because it gives me a way to empty my mind and not torture my children with my thoughts [laughs]. Dylan came up with the idea to get it out of my system. It’s helpful for me to write, and I do it every morning. I get up at 4 or 5 every day—that’s my time. I like to write with the sunrise. It’s very peaceful, and I’m always baking bread then. So I keep baker’s hours.

Q: Is a garden book next?

Maybe…you have to ask Brandon, he seems to know [she laughs]. He has it all mapped out. He tells me, “Mom, if you want to retire one day, you’ve got to do this and this and this.”

Q: It sounds like you’re listening to him. You also have your Sonsie natural skincare line and you’re doing movies again. Tell me about that.

Yes, I did a film directed by Gia Coppola called The Last Showgirl that is going to festivals soon. And then I’m co-starring in The Naked Gun with Liam Neeson, which we’re filming right now. It’s funny, it’s so much fun. I was so scared to work with him—he’s such a legend. But we’re having a ball. I’m so blessed and lucky. And the director, Akiva Schaffer, is hysterical. And then I have my Sonsie skincare line, which I do with my kids. It’s all based on how I handle skincare. I don’t do a lot, and I’m not a regimented kind of person when it comes to beauty. 

Q: In the past few years, you did the memoir and the documentary, which seem good ways to present earlier parts of your life. Looking forward, are you the type of person who has a five-year plan?

Me? Oh gosh no, I like living in the mystery. I can see the future, but I live in the moment. There are things percolating, a couple more films. Projects are finding me all of a sudden, so I’m going to be open to what the universe has in store. I’m not trying to control everything. I have a lot of freedom now and I owe a lot of it to my kids. You don’t have kids and expect that they are going to grow up to create businesses with you. They have their own lives, their own things that they do. This is just kind of like a hobby for them—Mom’s become a hobby. Sonsie is their own brand and it’s a lot of work for them to run it.

Reclaiming Her True Self

It’s often the small things that allow Pamela to show who she really is—poetry and doodles, meditation, and going makeup free are some of the ways she’s living life on her terms.

Q: I enjoyed the moments of your poetry in your autobiography. The cookbook has them, too, with handwritten lines along with your illustrations.

Yes, I did all the illustrations. I’m a doodler. I don’t say I’m a perfect drawer. I mean, I took some drawing lessons when I lived in France. I learned how to draw animals. I’m always trying to figure out what I’m good at, to discover what natural talents I have. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a really hard worker.

Q: How do you quiet your mind and find solace and peace in your life? You are a big reader. What other things have you identified that bring you joy?

I love rituals. I’m into candles and prayer and meditation. It really works. I don’t know if it’s called manifestation, but whatever you call it, it’s something that I’ve always done since I was little—writing and journaling. This is what saved me as a kid and as a teenager. As an adult, I write to know how I feel. I guess what I’m working on these days is being able to actually speak those words—sometimes writing is easier than telling somebody how you feel, especially in a modern world that has lost a little bit of this human connection. That’s why I felt like the cookbook was a great idea, because it’s about bringing people together around a dinner table. I have this little card game that I’ve made with conversation starters or questions, because I think we’ve kind of forgotten how to have a conversation at the table. For me, it’s about getting over shyness. I was painfully shy as a kid. I know, people probably don’t think of me as shy, but it has been very important for me to get over that, because the fear of what people think can paralyze you.

Q: You’ve talked about how you come from a long line of strong women. Is that a powerful thread for you?

Yes, but I’d say resilient women; resilient is the right word. It was important for me as a woman to break the family cycles as best I could. It’s not only that I lost patience with all of it, but sometimes I found myself caught up in things where I thought, No, this is the way everybody else did it. I’m not doing it this way. I see the family patterns, and then I get out of them somehow. I don’t want to keep running either. I want to stay. I still have a lot of growing up to do. In some ways I’m still a little kid trying to figure it all out.

Q: You’ve been through a lot in your life, good and bad. Are you naturally optimistic?

Well, I always tell my kids that challenges are the poetry of your life. You wouldn’t know hot if you didn’t know cold. You wouldn’t have appreciation for the good times without going through the hard times. It’s all a roller coaster.

Q: Lately, you’ve gotten a lot of attention, particularly on social media, for appearing at public events without makeup. A lot of women at our office say they love that you’re reclaiming your power and public image. Tell me how that came about.

That was the beginning of me letting go of the image I had always had of myself. What is this cartoon character that I’d created? OK, that was fun. But I’m not that person anymore. It was a dance I was doing that I was only partly aware of. And looking back, I can see why I did it. But I’ve always been into being a homemaker too. All the kids were always at our house. I cooked for everybody, pots of spaghetti for the neighborhood, and so my kids have always seen that part of me. And it hurt them to think that those other things are the only things people think of their mom. Yes, she’s been in Playboy. Yes, she’s done all these things, but we know who she is. It’s different now.

Q: How much are you pushing back on the idea of perfection, whether it’s in fashion or on social media?

I don’t think I was ever striving for perfection. But somewhere along the way, I started thinking that I want to challenge the idea of beauty and this mask we put on. As soon as I took the mask off, the whole world opened up. It just happened to be this silly thing of being at Paris Fashion Week and me saying, “I’m not going to sit in a makeup chair for three hours. I’m going to the Louvre.” Then I thought, Who am I competing with? I was appreciating it as this girl who lives on Vancouver Island that got plopped into these glamorous clothes. And I felt like this little freckle-faced kid with a big, beautiful Vivienne Westwood hat on. It was such a refreshing way to see everything, and I didn’t think anyone would even notice. And then it became this whole thing. I have people stop me on the street now and say, “You know, I never liked you before, but I do now.” And then I think, Hmm, I know there’s a compliment in there somewhere [laughs]

Q: You’re sharing with people a path that you love, right? How does your current life on Vancouver Island reveal that?

Coming back to my childhood home has revealed a very magical path to me. It’s a romantic way of living in nature with compassion and sensuality. I make my own rose hip oil, salt scrubs, and candles. I harvest things I’ve grown from my garden. This year I planted everything from seed. I don’t plant in straight lines. I plant in patches. It drives everyone crazy, but it looks beautiful. My mother said, “Can I help you plant?” I said, “No, nobody can help me plant.” Now she’s sending me pictures because I’m not home. And it is beautiful, exactly as I pictured it. I know where everything is. It may look confusing to some people, but it all makes sense to me. I’ve got every kind of heirloom tomato imaginable. Oh my gosh, I’m really excited to get home after filming ends.

Q: When you lived in Malibu, you had a big rose collection, right? Tell me about some of your favorite varieties.

My favorite rose is Yves Piaget. I remember getting 75 bare-root Yves Piaget roses before I even had my new Malibu garden planned out. They arrived, and I thought, Oops, now we need a garden. They were the center of my former rose garden. Now I’ve got a ton of different roses. I think a rose garden should be more uniform, so my new one is a little more structured than my vegetable garden. I like roses that are deeply fragrant. You can’t even see the ground when the roses are all in bloom. I bring them in my house over all the months that they’re blooming. I love them. I tell everyone I want to be sprinkled in a rose garden when the time comes.

Q: Are you an organic gardener?

I use only my own compost, which is obviously purely vegetables, but I’m also composting leaf mold. I got that from watching Monty Don [on the long-running BBC Gardeners’ World TV show]. He’s an incredible writer. I love that he’s such a poetic gardener, and I feel the same way. I’ve got all these collections of garden books about places like Virginia Woolf’s garden at Monk’s House. I think the best garden is a writer’s garden. I’ve got a beautiful table and my little pergola in my garden now where I can sit and write and read.

Q: Like a lot of our readers, you seem like you’re a sandwich generation person. Your kids are grown and out of the house, so obviously you don’t have to worry about them all the time, but still you’re paying attention to them and you have aging parents. You’re in the middle. Is that informing a lot in your life right now?

It was important to me a few years ago to make sure everyone was OK and settled. Now, I’ve done that. I wouldn’t say I’m a planner, but I’m a planner [laughs]. I needed to make sure my parents are OK. My mom has more energy than I do. I have dogs at home, so she’s always rustling up the three Lab mixes, and that’s a handful. I think she likes it better when I’m away and she can run the ranch. I need to trust that my kids are moving forward with their own thing. We’re all having parallel lives, but I’m always watching out. Hopefully, I’ll be a grandparent one day, which will be fun. When the boys were younger, I could always see everyone’s calendar in my head so I knew where everybody was at any given time. Back then I needed to keep track of every sporting event and everything else. I don’t know if that’s a mom thing to worry, but I can enjoy and relax a little bit now that everyone’s OK. Everyone’s finally good.