Early life
Anderson was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia, 90 km northwest of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, the daughter of Carol, a waitress, and Barry Anderson, a furnace repairman. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Saarijärvi, and left Finland in 1908 changing his name to Anderson when he arrived as an immigrant. Anderson has Dutch ancestry on her mother's side.
The newborn Anderson won fame as Canada's "Centennial Baby", because she was thought to have been the first baby born on Canada's Centennial Day (she was born at 4:08 in the morning). However, the Campbell River Upper Islander of July 5, 1967 reported a baby born two hours earlier on the same Canada Day.After her birth, her parents and her brother, Gerry Anderson, moved to the town of Comox with Pamela.

Career
After graduating from Highland Secondary School in 1985, Anderson moved to Vancouver and worked as a fitness instructor. During the summer of 1989, Pamela went with her friends to a BC Lions game at BC Place; at some point during the game she was shown on the stadium screen wearing a Labatt's t-shirt, causing the crowd to cheer for the 21-year-old Anderson. She was taken down to the field to get an ovation from the crowd. Labatt's immediately offered Anderson a modeling contract and she accepted. In late 1989, Pamela decided to model for Playboy magazine: she appeared on the October 1989 cover (credited as Pamela Anderson Ilicic) and decided to move to Los Angeles to continue her modeling career. She was the February 1990 playmate and has appeared in Playboy several times in the 1990s and the following decade.

Acting and modeling
After her move to Los Angeles, Anderson bleached her brunette hair blonde and underwent breast augmentation. In 1991, she landed a minor role on the hit television sitcom, Home Improvement (1991-1999). Having gained viewer attention, she landed the role of C. J. Parker (1992-1997) on Baywatch, and left Home Improvement after its second season. Anderson was still modeling for Outdoor Life and appearing on the cover of the magazine each year. Her role as C.J. Parker gave her more popularity and gained her attention from international viewers. She returned to Baywatch for the 2003 reunion movie, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding. She also made appearances on The Nanny as Fran's rival, Heather Biblow.
In 1996, she appeared in a feature film, Barb Wire, as a character known as Barbara Rose Kopetski, which was mistakenly thought by some to have been her real name. The movie, a thinly-veiled futuristic remake of Casablanca, failed to achieve commercial success. During the filming of Barb Wire, Anderson suffered a miscarriage. In April 1997, she guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. During the beginning of the show, Anderson said, "You know, if you're nervous on stage, you actually should be naked!" She then began a striptease. Her breasts, however, were covered by a small flesh-colored bra and she also wore a crotch patch that was also flesh colored (though they were still blurred out for the sake of the joke). The segment became fodder for late-night comedians for the following weeks. She also appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy; the other cover pictured Jenny McCarthy.
In September 1998, Anderson starred in her produced series V.I.P. It was very poorly received and a critical bomb. However, with many people tuning in just to see her, the show lasted four seasons before being canceled in 2002. Anderson stated that she needed to dedicate her time to raising her children, but many believed that she was retiring.
In March 2001, Christine Evelyn Roth was arrested while sleeping in a guest room of Anderson's home. She was only charged with the misdemeanor of trespassing and not the more serious crime of stalking. Roth pleaded guilty to the charge of trespassing and was deported home to France. In 2004, Anderson returned to the spotlight. In May, she appeared naked on the cover of Playboy magazine. It was the first time she had appeared naked on any magazine cover. Later, she posed naked for Stuff and GQ magazines. Many noticed that her breast size was larger than her pictorials from 2003.
Anderson became a naturalized citizen of the United States on May 12, 2004, while retaining her Canadian citizenship. She has lived in Southern California since 1989. Anderson has often spoken revealingly about her private life. On a visit to the David Letterman show in 2004, she said she had not been dating for some time, and when Letterman asked her how she was coping, she responded, "There's not a square corner left anywhere in my house!" Letterman left that comment unanswered while the audience hooted.
In 2004, Pamela Anderson released the book Star, co-written by Eric Shaw Quinn, in which she describes a young teenager doing different things in order to reach fame. After this, she began touring the United States, signing autographs for fans at Wal-Mart stores nationwide. Her second book, the sequel Star Struck, released in 2005, is a thinly veiled look at her life with Tommy Lee and the travails of celebrity life.
In January 2005, Anderson confessed that she had new bigger breast implants, claiming not to feel like herself without them.
In April 2005, Anderson starred in a new FOX sitcom Stacked as Skyler Dayton, a party girl (with implants), who goes to work at a bookstore. It was canceled on May 18, 2006, after two seasons, although some episodes had not been aired on the network. On August 14, 2005, Comedy Central created the Roast of Pamela Anderson to honor the sex symbol for the past decade. During her final speech at the Roast, Pamela referred to her breasts as "Pancho and Lefty".
In December 2005, NBC cut off a video of Anderson pole dancing topless on Elton John's "The Red Piano." NBC said that the footage was inappropriate for primetime. The video was shown on huge screens during the event, while John was playing a song. Anderson was topless, but stars were painted on her breasts.
In March 2006, it was announced that Anderson would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame thanks to her many years as a model and actress. She is only the second model to receive a star. In April 2006, Anderson hosted Canada's Juno Awards, becoming the first non-singer and model to do so.
Anderson was repeatedly referenced in the 2006 comedy film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan as the title character seeks to kidnap and marry her. Anderson appears in person at the end of the film confronted by Borat in a staged botched abduction. She has subsequently begun filming a comedy, Blonde and Blonder.
She performed on February 13-14 2008 a Valentine's Day striptease act at the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris.

Personal life
In addition to her fame from modeling and acting, Anderson has received a great deal of press attention for her well-publicized personal life. Her relationships have made headlines in gossip magazines for years. She married Tommy Lee, drummer of Mötley Crüe, on February 19, 1995 after knowing him for only 96 hours and the couple eventually had two sons, Brandon Thomas

Lee (b. June 6, 1996) and Dylan Jagger Lee (b. December 29, 1997). During this time, she was known professionally as Pamela Anderson Lee. Anderson filed for divorce from him twice and reconciled with him twice, before the couple finally broke up for good. On February 25, 1998, the couple had a violent argument, and Pamela had Tommy arrested on charges of spousal abuse. The next day, Pamela filed for divorce. On February 28, 1998, the divorce was official, two days after the filing of the divorce. Tommy was sentenced to six months in jail. In May 1998, he had to go to anger management therapy and pay Anderson's legal fees. In March 2002, Anderson publicly stated that she had contracted the Hepatitis C virus from Lee (supposedly from sharing tattoo needles), and began writing a regular column for Jane magazine. In October 2003, Anderson jokingly said on Howard Stern's radio show that she does not expect to live more than ten or fifteen years, but this was misconstrued and taken seriously by many websites and tabloids. She however admitted to newspapers that she still often had sex with him since their divorce.
A pornographic home video of Anderson and Tommy Lee on their honeymoon was stolen from their home, and made a huge stir on the Internet. Anderson sued the Internet Entertainment Group, the company that was distributing the video. Ultimately the courts awarded Anderson and Lee $1.5 million plus attorney fees for their share of the profits. After this, the company sold copies of the stolen honeymoon tape across the country. It was very popular.
A second tape, which was made before the Tommy Lee tape, involving Anderson and musician Bret Michaels from Poison was later distributed on the internet. Frames of the video first appeared in Penthouse magazine in March 1998. The popularity and profitability of the Anderson and Tommy Lee video sparked a miniature genre within the porn film industry and since then many homemade porn videos of celebrities have been released to the public through home video and web channels (either with or without the participants' co-operation).
Since her divorce, she has become engaged to both the model Marcus Schenkenberg and the singer Kid Rock (Robert J. Ritchie). She broke up with Schenkenberg in 2001, and broke up with Kid Rock in 2003. It was announced on July 18, 2006 that she would marry Kid Rock on July 29, 2006 on a yacht near St Tropez, France. "Feels like I've been stuck in a time warp," said Anderson in her blog entry. "Not able to let go of MY family picture ... it's been sad and lonely and frustrating ... I've raised my kids alone in hope of a miracle. Well my miracle came and went. And came back and back because he knew that I'd wake up one day and realize that I was waiting for nothing." "I'm moving on," she declared. "I feel like I'm finally free ... I'm in love." There was extensive unconfirmed media speculation that the marriage was pregnancy-related, but the theory was based only on Anderson's representative's refusal to comment on the question.
She put her Malibu, California, home up for sale in order to move to a more private location. In an interview with Gavriel Maynard, Anderson stated "I don't know why people consider me stupid, I'm actually really smart."
On November 10, 2006, it was announced that Anderson miscarried while in Vancouver shooting a new film, Blonde and Blonder. Seventeen days later, on November 27, 2006 Anderson filed for divorce in Los Angeles County Superior Court from Kid Rock, citing irreconcilable differences. Some news reports have suggested that Kid Rock's outrage during a screening of Borat, in which she plays a cameo role, led to the filing for divorce two weeks later.
Anderson told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in September 2007 that she was engaged. On September 29, Anderson and Paris Hilton's ex-Rick Salomon applied for a marriage license in Las Vegas. Anderson married Salomon between her two nightly appearances at the Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino in Hans Klok's magic show in a small wedding ceremony at The Mirage on October 6, 2007. However, on February 22, 2008, Anderson has requested through the courts that the marriage be annulled citing reasons of fraud.