Pamela Anderson has revealed that the late Hugh Hefner was the only man who treated her with respect, in a recent interview.
Anderson, 55, has been on the promotional trail for her latest projects - a memoir that focuses on her life, as well as a documentary. The documentary is described as "an intimate and humanizing portrait of one of the world's most famous blonde bombshells," and will follow "the trajectory of Pamela Anderson's life and career from small-town girl to international sex symbol, actress, activist, and doting mother."
It's expected that the former Baywatch actress will touch upon her notorious marriage to Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee - the tumultuous relationship which was the subject of last year's miniseries, Pam and Tommy, starring Sebastian Stan and Lily James. That series centered on Anderson and Lee's sex tape leak, and how it affected their lives and careers soon after.
While Anderson was married four more times following her 1998 divorce from Lee, she's now revealed that the only man who ever treated her with respect was Hefner, the late founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, Anderson - who appeared on the cover of the men's magazine a total of 14 times - first stated that she'd originally wanted to be a librarian growing up, "but I just went in a different direction."
Having been open about experiencing sexual abuse as an adolescent, Anderson said that the opportunity to leave home for the Playboy Mansion came from being shy. "I was painfully shy and I hated that feeling," she said, "that's why I did it. I just didn't want that feeling anymore."
The experience of posing for Playboy made her feel liberated, with the mom-of-two saying: "Doing that first photoshoot gave me this little kind of portal on what it felt like to be a sensual woman. My sexuality was mine. I took my power back."
After delving into her traumatic marriages, Anderson was asked whether anyone had ever treated her with "complete and utter respect," to which she replied: "Hugh Hefner."
This may have come as a shock to many people, given that Hefner - who passed away in 2017 aged 91 - has been accused of exploiting women at the Playboy Mansion.
His former girlfriend Bridget Marquardt even stated on her podcast in August 2022 that she has tried to "block out" memories of having group sex with Hefner, and that she usually wanted the experience to be over "as quickly as possible."
Marquardt even hit out at Hefner's 'Pig Night', where he rounded up prostitutes and brought them back to the mansion, checked them for STDs, and subsequently passed them on to his guests for sex.
"We were all kind of gaslit and expected to think of [Hefner] as, like, this really good guy [...] You started to feel like, 'Oh, he's not what they say in the media — he's just a nice man,'" she recalled.
As for Anderson, her upcoming Netflix documentary, Pamela: A Love Story, is set for release on Tuesday (January 31).
