“I hope you die!” she told her former babysitter.
Her first wedding took place on the beach.
She thinks her new look is “a little rebellious.”
Despite her humble birth on July 1, 1967, in Ladysmith, British Columbia, to a waitress and jack-of-all-trades, the brunette in the photo’s birth was reported in a newspaper. She was the first centennial baby.
She went on to have an extraordinary life sparked by another instance of being in the right place at the right time. However, she first had to survive a traumatic childhood of violence and abuse.
Her parents were 17 and 19 when they had her and still went out occasionally. Somewhere between the ages of four and eight, she had a female babysitter who molested her for around a year.
The babysitter “sexualized” the girl at a very young age, making her play inappropriate games. One day, the caretaker told her because she is a “bad girl,” Santa Claus would not visit her that year.
“I ran after her in tears, calling her a liar… and clumsily stabbed her with a candy-cane-striped pen in her chest,” she penned in her memoir. “‘I hope you die!’ I screamed through tears.”
The female predator died in a car accident following her graduation not long after. On hearing the news, the girl came to believe it was her doing, that she had some extraordinary power. She carried this with her for her “entire young life,” eventually confiding in her mom and dad.
Her parent’s volatile relationship would also cause her to act out. Once, when the couple was fighting, she tried to divert attention away from it by telling her younger brother to hide while she convinced the town that he was missing.
Her father would dole out cruel punishments. When she went against his wishes to have her kittens in the house, he placed them in a paper bag and drowned them in the ocean. “I felt like I died that night, too,” she remembers.
Between ages 12 and 14, she was sexually assaulted twice, and a boyfriend kicked her out of a moving car. She once stopped her father from assaulting her mom further by punching him.
The young brunette became known as “Blue Zone Girl” when she was spotted on a jumbotron at a football game, but she would soon be renowned worldwide by her real name, Pamela Anderson.
A beer company scouted her as a spokesmodel, leading to a Playboy shoot. A “Home Improvement” role brought her into the mainstream, but she became a superstar portraying CJ on “Baywatch.”
Her whirlwind romance with drummer Tommy Lee crescendoed into a wedding on the beach in Cancun, Mexico, in 1995, where she wore a white string bikini and he was in trunks. The couple had two children, Dylan Jagger and Brandon Thomas.
The footage they made during their honeymoon was stolen and sold as one of the first sex tapes of the internet era. The actress has never watched the tape but has felt its effects. She wrote how it “ruined lives,” starting with their relationship.
Lee was jailed for four months after he was found guilty of spousal abuse, and they divorced in 1998. She filed for full custody of the children in 2012, claiming that he was emotionally and physically abusive towards them.
Anderson has experienced a resurgence in her career. She has taken back the narrative surrounding her crafted by the media with a memoir, “Love, Pamela,” and participating in the companion Netflix documentary.
Returning to her coastal hometown of Ladysmith, Anderson found a “healing space” with its “crazy calmness.” With limited paparazzi on the island, she feels protected. She lives alone with her five dogs.
“I live a more romantic life now that I’m alone than I did in relationships,” Anderson said of the home she made in her grandparent’s old farmhouse.
The humanitarian runs through the waves on the beach adjoined to her property year-round. When not working, she keeps busy in the 15,000-square-foot vegetable and rose garden and has taken up pottery. “I’m very crafty. I didn’t realize,” she said.
In an interview with People in January 2023, she conceded that she would like to have someone to share her life but that it tended to be a case of her catering to her partner’s needs. After Lee, she wed Kid Rock and married Rick Salomon twice (one of which was annulled).
Her most recent marriage to Dan Hayhurst lasted only a few months and ended in 2021. The “V.I.P.” star has learned that she does not need a man to bring her roses:
“I’ve just planted a hundred rose bushes. I can get them any time I want — and they’re my favorite roses.”
She told Elle in August 2023 that the early morning hours were her favorite time. Anderson spends this time writing a newsletter, though she quipped she does this to distract herself from writing long, rambling emails to her sons.
Just as gardening and writing in the mornings replaced the party lifestyle she enjoyed at the height of her fame, so has her signature beauty look morphed into something else.
She was known for big blond hair, thin brows, and heavy eye makeup with tiny outfits that were, by her own account, “wild and uninhibited.” Anderson added:
“I don’t know if it was a defense mechanism or what. I just thought, ‘I’m going to have fun.’”
Over the past few years, she has been sporting a more stripped-down beauty look, sometimes looking like she is not wearing makeup. Following the death of her makeup artist, Alexis Vogel, she started taking a new approach. She explained:
“She was the best. And since then, I just felt, without Alexis, it’s just better for me not to wear makeup.”
The star might have turned her back on the signature look, but a new generation of people have rediscovered her Y2K style and #Pamcore trends frequently on TikTok.
The animal lover contends that her beauty update is “freeing, and fun, and a little rebellious too.” When she looks in the mirror, she feels “rooted for.” Pamela Anderson says she is in a good place.
The sultry Heather Thomas of ‘The Fall Guy’ struggled with addiction – but look at her now, at 66
Known for her starring role opposite Lee Majors in The Fall Guy, Heather Thomas–who turned 66 on September 8–was poised for a hugely success Hollywood career.
But when the actor’s mother showed up on set after the show’s finale was filmed, the gorgeous blonde rushed to hospital, believing that her father had an emergency.
The family and friends who greeted her at the Santa Monica hospital let her know that her dad, Leon, was fine, and that it was her who had their concerns.
This was just the beginning of a new journey for the then 28-year-old woman, whose personal life and career completely transformed after that visit to the hospital.
Keep reading to find out what happened to the former pinup girl of the 1980s!
Gifted with the talent and natural movie star beauty that rivalled Farrah Fawcett and Heather Locklear, Heather Thomas did what she was born to do.
Playing Jody Banks, a stuntwoman-bounty hunter on the popular action show, Thomas was adored by the male population who viewed her as a sex symbol, a title which she admits to having mixed feelings.
“There’s obligatory condescension that goes with that,” Thomas told People. “You fill that archetype, the blonde bimbo. But at that point, I was just having fun.”
Unfortunately, she was having too much fun with the inclusion of drugs, a habit that started before her role as Jody Banks.
Her substance use dates to the sixth grade when she started using drugs to maintain steady top grades. Thomas said, “I was taking acid and making straight A’s. I just thought it was mind expanding.”
As her mind evolved from child to adult, so did the drugs she consumed.
At UCLA Thomas started using cocaine and in 1981, one year into her role on The Fall Guy, her drug problems escalated.
Also, feeling like she had to live up with her sex symbol title, the 5-foot-7 Thomas became obsessed with weight, and started taking Lasix, a diuretic that can cause severe lethargy.
To counteract the lethargy, she took more cocaine for a burst of energy.
“At first I was in a honeymoon stage with the drug. I felt that I was getting a lot for my money. It enabled me to stay up all night and then work all the next day,” she said, claiming that she never used cocaine on set. “Cocaine is not approved of on sets. It’s not clubby to do it anymore. It is just a private hell.”
Contrary to her claims, a source close to the actor told People that her drug use was derailing her career. “Word was out on Heather,” the source said. “People knew she had a problem.”
Thomas dropped from 125 to 105 pounds and was falling asleep between takes. Thomas admitted, “Sometimes I was in a minicoma.”
And then she passed out in front of Majors, who called her manager, who called her mother.
When the series finale of The Fall Guy wrapped, her mom, Gladdy Ryder–a former special education teacher–appeared on the set and told her daughter that her father was in hospital.
Rushing to St. John’s Hospital, the author of “Trophies” was greeted by family and friends who were ready to see her admitted into the hospital’s three-week drug program.
“It was a big relief to me,” Thomas said of that day, adding that when she checked into detox, she had pneumonia, scarred lungs and inflamed kidneys. “I’d been on a roller coaster and I wanted to get off. If my family hadn’t intervened, I probably would have gone on my merry way until I lost my job or I died.”
She added, “…The doctors said I should have been dead three years ago.”
Committed to recovery, Thomas surrounded herself with like-minded people who would benefit her goals of being drug-free. That was when Thomas, 28 at the time, met and married Allan Rosenthal, the co-founder of Cocaine Anonymous, whom she divorced in September 1986.
The same month, she suffered serious injuries to both legs when she was struck by a car while crossing the street.
After detox, divorce and surgery repair major damage in one of her legs, Thomas returned to work with smaller roles in TV series. She can also be seen in films like in Cyclone in 1987 and the 1990 Canadian film Red Blooded American Girl with Christopher Plummer.
With her troubles behind her, Thomas started new in the 1990s and while trying to revive her career, she married entertainment lawyer Skip Brittenham in 1992. Taking on the new role as the stepmother to his two daughters, Kristina and Shauna, Thomas also gave birth to her only biological child, daughter India Rose who was born in June 2000.
“So when I had about 45 restraining orders out, and I was on everything from a toilet seat cover to an ashtray–and I was in love, and [then] had two little girls–I decided to give it up and write for a while,” she told Reuters.
In 2017, Heather made a brief comeback in the movie Girltrash: All Night Long, one of her 26 acting credits in her career.
Focused mostly on writing, the Zapped! actor said it wasn’t a lack of roles that drove her from acting, but the stalkers who persistently breached her privacy.
“I was getting so stalked. I had one guy climb over the fence with a knife one time. I had these two little girls and they desperately needed raising so that was that. But I think now I have gotten so old that people won’t bother me much.”
Thomas is also now involved as an activist and formerly served on the board for the Rape Foundation and Amazon Conservation Team.
Identifying as a feminist–a duplicitous title for a former sex symbol–Thomas explained the power of both.
“When I was young, I did what people told me to do but when I was older, I didn’t compromise myself. I wanted power and freedom. This gave me a house and the notoriety to get into the door. There is nothing horrible in letting people see your body. I don’t think I betrayed myself. I don’t think being a feminist means you should be ashamed of your body,” she said.
It’s really sad that Heather Thomas was unable to revive her career in acting again but we’re happy that she got the help she needed and is now in a lifelong journey of recovery.
There are so many wonderful shows of the 1980s and we loved seeing her in the role of Jody Banks in The Fall Guy with the Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors!
We’d love to hear what you have to say about Thomas and her recovery!
Known for her starring role opposite Lee Majors in The Fall Guy, Heather Thomas–who turned 66 on September 8–was poised for a hugely success Hollywood career.
But when the actor’s mother showed up on set after the show’s finale was filmed, the gorgeous blonde rushed to hospital, believing that her father had an emergency.
The family and friends who greeted her at the Santa Monica hospital let her know that her dad, Leon, was fine, and that it was her who had their concerns.
At only 14 the girl hosted an NBC series called Talking with a Giant, a show where she and four other teens interviewed celebrities.
Wanting to take her career to the next level–as an actor, director and writer–Thomas, now 66, then studied film and theater at UCLA, and the year before she graduated, she appeared in the short-lived comedy series, Co-Ed Fever (1979).
Heather Locklear and Heather ThomasPosted by Back to 80s on Saturday, June 5, 2021
In 1980, the Connecticut-born actor won her first leading role in the TV series, The Fall Guy, playing the sidekick to Lee Majors, who in the 1970s, gained global recognition for his performance as Steven Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man.
Playing Jody Banks, a stuntwoman-bounty hunter on the popular action show, Thomas was adored by the male population who viewed her as a sex symbol, a title which she admits to having mixed feelings.
“There’s obligatory condescension that goes with that,” Thomas told People. “You fill that archetype, the blonde bimbo. But at that point, I was just having fun.”
Unfortunately, she was having too much fun with the inclusion of drugs, a habit that started before her role as Jody Banks.
Her substance use dates to the sixth grade when she started using drugs to maintain steady top grades. Thomas said, “I was taking acid and making straight A’s. I just thought it was mind expanding.”
As her mind evolved from child to adult, so did the drugs she consumed.
At UCLA Thomas started using cocaine and in 1981, one year into her role on The Fall Guy, her drug problems escalated.
Also, feeling like she had to live up with her sex symbol title, the 5-foot-7 Thomas became obsessed with weight, and started taking Lasix, a diuretic that can cause severe lethargy.
To counteract the lethargy, she took more cocaine for a burst of energy.
“At first I was in a honeymoon stage with the drug. I felt that I was getting a lot for my money. It enabled me to stay up all night and then work all the next day,” she said, claiming that she never used cocaine on set. “Cocaine is not approved of on sets. It’s not clubby to do it anymore. It is just a private hell.”
Contrary to her claims, a source close to the actor told People that her drug use was derailing her career. “Word was out on Heather,” the source said. “People knew she had a problem.”
Thomas dropped from 125 to 105 pounds and was falling asleep between takes. Thomas admitted, “Sometimes I was in a minicoma.”
And then she passed out in front of Majors, who called her manager, who called her mother.
When the series finale of The Fall Guy wrapped, her mom, Gladdy Ryder–a former special education teacher–appeared on the set and told her daughter that her father was in hospital.
Rushing to St. John’s Hospital, the author of “Trophies” was greeted by family and friends who were ready to see her admitted into the hospital’s three-week drug program.
“It was a big relief to me,” Thomas said of that day, adding that when she checked into detox, she had pneumonia, scarred lungs and inflamed kidneys. “I’d been on a roller coaster and I wanted to get off. If my family hadn’t intervened, I probably would have gone on my merry way until I lost my job or I died.”
She added, “…The doctors said I should have been dead three years ago.”
Committed to recovery, Thomas surrounded herself with like-minded people who would benefit her goals of being drug-free. That was when Thomas, 28 at the time, met and married Allan Rosenthal, the co-founder of Cocaine Anonymous, whom she divorced in September 1986.
The same month, she suffered serious injuries to both legs when she was struck by a car while crossing the street.
After detox, divorce and surgery repair major damage in one of her legs, Thomas returned to work with smaller roles in TV series. She can also be seen in films like in Cyclone in 1987 and the 1990 Canadian film Red Blooded American Girl with Christopher Plummer.
With her troubles behind her, Thomas started new in the 1990s and while trying to revive her career, she married entertainment lawyer Skip Brittenham in 1992. Taking on the new role as the stepmother to his two daughters, Kristina and Shauna, Thomas also gave birth to her only biological child, daughter India Rose who was born in June 2000.
“So when I had about 45 restraining orders out, and I was on everything from a toilet seat cover to an ashtray–and I was in love, and [then] had two little girls–I decided to give it up and write for a while,” she told Reuters.
In 2017, Heather made a brief comeback in the movie Girltrash: All Night Long, one of her 26 acting credits in her career.
Focused mostly on writing, the Zapped! actor said it wasn’t a lack of roles that drove her from acting, but the stalkers who persistently breached her privacy.
“I was getting so stalked. I had one guy climb over the fence with a knife one time. I had these two little girls and they desperately needed raising so that was that. But I think now I have gotten so old that people won’t bother me much.”
Thomas is also now involved as an activist and formerly served on the board for the Rape Foundation and Amazon Conservation Team.
Identifying as a feminist–a duplicitous title for a former sex symbol–Thomas explained the power of both.
“When I was young, I did what people told me to do but when I was older, I didn’t compromise myself. I wanted power and freedom. This gave me a house and the notoriety to get into the door. There is nothing horrible in letting people see your body. I don’t think I betrayed myself. I don’t think being a feminist means you should be ashamed of your body,” she said.
It’s really sad that Heather Thomas was unable to revive her career in acting again but we’re happy that she got the help she needed and is now in a lifelong journey of recovery.
There are so many wonderful shows of the 1980s and we loved seeing her in the role of Jody Banks in The Fall Guy with the Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors!
We’d love to hear what you have to say about Thomas and her recovery!
If you just took a walk down memory lane, step back in time again and read about the iconic model Twiggy – and press here to see how she looks today, at 73.
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