The first time Pamela Anderson flew to Los Angeles, she was reading Shirley MacLaine’s memoir Out on a Limb. Four decades later, Anderson, 59, counts MacLaine as a new friend — and over a recent breakfast, the Hollywood legend offered a piece of advice: “Play older! It’s so much more fun.”
Anderson spent much of her career pigeonholed as a sex symbol, from the cover of Playboy through her years on Baywatch. But she is in the midst of a genuine acting renaissance, one kicked off by her acclaimed turn as Roxie Hart in the 2022 Broadway production of Chicago.
She has since starred in the devastating drama The Last Showgirl (2024) opposite Jamie Lee Curtis and a riotous reboot of The Naked Gun (2025) with Liam Neeson — and for what comes next, she has taken MacLaine’s counsel to heart.
That next step is Karim Aïnouz’s black tragicomedy Rosebush Pruning, in which Anderson plays the Mother, the matriarch of a twisted, wealthy family — a role that pushes her further into the kind of complex, grown-up character work she now seems determined to chase.