PAMELA Anderson’s life has been defined by her bathing suits – twice getting married in a white bikini, and strutting up and down the beach in her famous Baywatch cossie in the Nineties TV drama.
But after a female stalker entered her house and tried on the red one-piece in her bedroom, the actress told cops she would not be wanting it back.
Pammy has opened up about the bizarre incident after launching her own bikini range and becoming the face of Canadian brand Aritzia’s new winter clothing range.
Obsessed French fan Christine Roth, 27, was arrested for breaking into the star’s Malibu home in 2001.
Mum of two Pamela, 56, recalled: “My mum was in hospital and my dad was coming into town so I was preparing a room for him when someone came upstairs and said, ‘Pamela, there is someone sleeping in your bed’. I was thinking, ‘Very Goldilocksy’, like maybe it was my brother’s wife or maybe someone snuck in the back door.
“We went into the room and there was a woman wearing my red bathing suit and speaking French, blonde hair, and then she gave me a letter saying she wanted to touch me and she was there for that, and she had a lot of my clothes under the bed.”
The stalker’s note read: “I’m not a lesbian, but I dream of you.”
Pamela continued: “She had been there for a while and then she cut her wrists with glass and it was this panicky moment. I grabbed the kids and went outside.
“There were lots of little things that had gone missing, like bread and my jean jacket, and I kept thinking I was losing my mind.
“It was all under the bed and it was a room that had an outside entrance so she came in off the beach.
“Anyway, she was deported back to France and she had some issues and her family was happy to have her back and I was happy to see her go.
“And then the police asked me if I wanted my bathing suit back and I said, ‘No, it’s OK, thank you very much though. Just give it to her!’ ”
At the time, five-times-married Pamela was living with her young sons Brandon, now 26, and Dylan, 25, having divorced her first husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, three years earlier.
She recalled: “The police said, ‘Well, you really weren’t in that much danger because she was a girl’.
“I was like, ‘How does that make it less dangerous? Women can still murder people’.
“There were lots of scary moments, but somehow I skate through everything and I am still here.”
Pamela first wore a white bridal bikini for her beach wedding to Tommy in Mexico in 1995.
She said: “I’ve been married twice in a white bikini, I guess. There’s always a bikini under anything I’m wearing if I’m at the beach.
“It’s definitely inspired by my wedding on the beach the first time in Cancun.
“I still can’t believe half the stuff I’ve done in my life.
“It just makes me laugh because not a lot of thought went into it. It was a bikini, it was white, I was on the beach. I was like, ‘Let’s get married’.”
Pammy clearly liked the look, as she wore another white two-piece for her second wedding, to rapper Kid Rock in St Tropez, France, in 2006.
They divorced a year later.
The past few months have heralded a remarkable comeback for Pamela after she was humiliated by last year’s release of hit Disney+ TV series Pam & Tommy, which recounted the theft of the sex video she and Tommy recorded on their 1995 honeymoon.
This month she did a photoshoot for clothing firm Babaton’s autumn collection, aimed at modern professionals with busy lives.
And now she is focusing on her new swimwear range with designer Frankie Aiello, who she got to know when they were both living in Paradise Cove, Malibu.
Pamela said: “I’ve had people ask me to do bikini lines my whole career but I always wanted it to be sustainable. I wanted it to be so many crazy things.
“People used to think I was crazy because I was vegan 20 years ago and they’d say, ‘We are not going to do biodegradable packaging made out of corn, you are crazy’.
“And now everyone is making that. I was just a little bit ahead of my time, and it’s in fashion now. I’m so happy to see Frankie do so well and I wanted to do something to support her.”
Pam & Tommy, starring Lily James as Pamela and Sebastian Stan as Tommy, focused on the aftermath of the couple’s sex tape theft.
Pamela refused to endorse or even watch the series, saying she did not want to be reminded of one of the most traumatic episodes in her past.
The stolen video went viral in the late 1990s and experts believe it led to an increase in the popularity of online pornography.
Pamela has described the producers of the series as “a**holes”, adding that actors Lily and Sebastian looked as if they were wearing Halloween costumes.
She adds that she is secretly thrilled when people dress up for parties and events as her ex- husbands, including Kid Rock.
She also likes it when they pay tribute to her 1996 superhero film Barb Wire.
Pamela said: “Once you’re a Halloween costume you’ve made it, right? Like Baywatch, Barb Wire.
“I used to give out caramel apples to everybody at the Colony (district) in Malibu and people would come as me and Tommy and me and Kid Rock and everyone was like, ‘Ha ha’, but there were so many of them that came by.
“It’s the caricature part of it that is funny, and it is flattering. A lot of drag queens do it too.”
Looking back on happier days during the 1990s when she was with Tommy, she told the podcast Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino: “I remember doing a campaign and someone asked, ‘Who was the stylist who put all those crazy costumes together, like the dazzle pants and big hat?’
“I was like, ‘It was me’. I just went into my drawer and put loads of stuff together and thought it was funny. We did my make-up and we walked out the door.
“It wasn’t as if I was trying to be anyone else, I was trying to be myself and have fun. Like, ‘Oh, we have a red carpet, let’s go crazy’.
“Tommy was flashing people. It was funny and we just weren’t trying to be too serious.
“The Nineties was very much about being different and now it’s more about trying to be in or what’s in fashion. We didn’t think about it back then.”
But some things never change.
Pamela says: “I still have my bikinis that I had in my twenties. I hang on to everything. They’re pretty much see-through and worn out.
“They’re not usable because when you have kids, you’re running around the beach. And you’re not running around in a tiny little bikini all the time.”
But the chances are that Pammy will be running around in a red cossie of some kind — even if she did let her famous Baywatch outfit go.
She added: “Red has always been my lucky colour, it’s a power colour.
“I never think red is going to look good on me, but then when I wear red, good stuff happens.”
