In Paris for Fashion Week, Pamela Anderson decided to take it all off. Not her clothes. Her face.
“I was facing three hours of hair and makeup, but I really wanted to go to the Louvre. I wanted to walk around and actually see Paris,” she recalls.
The 57-year-old actor and activist did something that some found liberating. “I went out with no makeup. I put my hair in a ponytail,” she says.
The former “Baywatch” star couldn’t believe the reaction as she continued to leave home without the endless Hollywood glamour routine. “Mothers bring their little girls up to me and say, ‘Look. She feels good about herself. She feels free,’ ” Anderson says.
At the Toronto Film Festival with “The Last Showgirl,” Anderson was still basking in that freedom. “I feel good enough as I am at this age,” she says. “I don’t feel I need to chase some impossible beauty dream. I feel so free. I have more time for myself instead of chasing youth. I feel wonderful in my own skin.”
In “The Last Showgirl,” directed by Gia Coppola, Anderson portrays a Vegas performer who faces an uncertain future when her show is canceled after a 38-year run. She also needs to fix things with her daughter (Billie Lourd) with the help of her best friend (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Anderson — who also has published a new cookbook called “I Love You: Recipes From the Heart” — says that the role “really scared me, but I jumped right in. It was about peeling it all back, remembering who I am and not being defined by what people think. It’s about what I think and do now.”
Her good life tips:
A second act
Anderson didn’t think she had a shot at serious dramatic film roles anymore. “I thought I would never get a chance to do anything like this film,” she says. “I was at the point where I thought, ‘I’m just going to go back to my farm, make some jam and still have a beautiful life.’ ” But then the documentary of her life, “Pamela: A Love Story,” came out, plus the memoir “Love, Pamela,” and it caught the attention of director Coppola. “I wanted to freaking crush this movie. I fell in love with the script,” Anderson shares. “I poured myself into it. I had nothing to lose. … I thought, ‘There’s nobody that can do this but me. I have to do it.’ ”
Embrace it all
“The things that scare you are sometimes the best things. You feel the fear and head right into it,” Anderson reasons. “This film was so cathartic, but everything in life is cathartic in a way. Everything is therapy. I embrace it all.”
Always learning
Anderson says that you can learn at any stage of life. She enrolled in acting school to prep for the role in “The Last Showgirl.” “I went back to school because I’m at an age where you can really take learning seriously. School also felt like a big relief. Every day I went to work feeling more secure.”
Cook with love
“I gave my kids recipe card boxes when they moved into their house. It’s a nice gift filled with all the family recipes. They said, ‘This is a book,’ ” Anderson says, explaining the origins of her new cookbook. “One of my kids said, ‘Let’s call a publisher.’
“It’s plant-based cooking, and there are so many reasons to eat that way,” she continues. “I think we get into eating habits and it seems hard to change, but it’s refreshing to try something new.”
For Anderson, healthy eating starts in her garden, where she grows her veggies from seeds and nurtures them daily. “I renovated my veggie farm a few years ago and it feels so good to dig in the dirt and feed myself with food that I grow,” she says. “It’s my next chapter.”
No regrets
In her younger days, Anderson logged her fair share of tabloid headlines. She says she looks back but doesn’t dwell on what went wrong. “You can’t live with regrets,” Anderson says. “You can wish to fix certain things, but you can’t go back. You can just change things now and push forward. … What I’ve gone through has only made me stronger. You survive it and come out better.”
Find inspiration
Growing up in Canada, Anderson went through hard times with her mom, including living on welfare and dealing with her parents splitting up. The couple eventually reconciled. “I certainly don’t blame my parents for my upbringing,” she says. “I’m grateful because I gained a lot of good qualities along with the bad.”
Today, she calls her mother, Carol, her touchstone. “My mom is in her 70s and has more energy than me,” she says. “She proves that you can feel so alive and inspired at any age. And you can’t be complacent. Today is the only chance that you get.”
Better days ahead
“I’m at a new point in my life where I still don’t even know what I’m capable of yet,” Anderson says. “I haven’t even scratched the surface.”