Pamela Anderson in Zurich: portrait

A word that Pamela Anderson uses often during her visit to Zurich is “pop culture”. “I loved being part of pop culture,” says the 57-year-old, sitting in an otherwise completely glamor-free cinema in Zurich Sihlcity on Saturday afternoon in a lively white fringed dress. Her dress is a mixture of polar bear fur and a Broadway musical and perfectly symbolizes the arc of her life between a former animal rights activist and her new film “The Last Showgirl”.

By pop culture she means a time a good thirty years ago, pop culture, that was everything that was on television or had space in a magazine back then, that was “Bravo”, MTV, Viva. These were series like “Baywatch” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” that shamelessly showed beautiful young people from America doing jobs that always looked like leisure time. Pop culture in the 90s was the great postmodern carefree world, the world before 9/11, and Pamela Anderson in the middle of it all.

“What’s wrong with a face without makeup?”

She played the lifeguard CJ Parker for 110 “Baywatch” episodes, was the blonde crowning glory of a hedonistic fun culture, always carrying buoys and breasts in front of her and popular with everyone because she was sexy and led an eccentric life and at the same time was so nice, so nice Joy remained friendly. Her voice is the same today as it was back then, that’s what it might sound like if the sun were falling on a particularly golden honey bread and smiling at this incredibly sweet encounter.

Her Scandinavian heritage is much more visible to her today than it used to be. Her grandfather emigrated to Canada from Finland, “he taught me everything about mythology and fairy tales.” She herself no longer resembles the CJ of old, she could now star in an Astrid Lindgren film adaptation, perhaps an ironic adult figure who is young at heart, her face speaks of a lot of experience and a huge, all-embracing cheerfulness. She looks like a ray of hope. Because Pamela Anderson stopped wearing makeup one day.

“What’s wrong with a face without makeup?” she asks, “I’m my own experiment at a time when young women consume multiple filtered faces on Instagram and are then disappointed when they look in the mirror.”

It suits her more natural lifestyle, in addition to acting she now runs a farm on Vancouver Island, her hands look like a lot of gardening, she is a dedicated gardener and cook and enjoys having her sons Brandon and Dylan (from her relationship with Tommy Lee) will do anything for her. What surprises her a little: “I never had a nanny, they were always with me everywhere, which was perhaps a mistake, I’m afraid they saw a lot.”

A real family business

Last year, Netflix screened the Brandon-produced documentary “Pamela, a Love Story,” and on October 15, Pamela Anderson’s first cookbook will be released, which the boys persuaded her to write after she helped them and their friends with index cards full of recipes. Of course it is a vegan cookbook, “but I didn’t write that down, I didn’t want to be put in the vegan corner, I prefer to call it a celebration of all the beautiful vegetables in my garden.” And the mother and sons also run a sustainable skin care line together. A real family business.

How fitting that working on “The Last Showgirl” catapulted her into the middle of another family business. In one of the most important in Hollywood. Into a royal family, so to speak. Into the Coppola clan. Its director is 37, her name is Gia Coppola, she is the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and the niece of Sofia Coppola. Gia’s father Gian-Carlo Coppola died in a boating accident when he was 22; his wife was pregnant with Gia at the time. Kate Gersten, Gia’s cousin, wrote the script for “The Last Showgirl” and then the search for the right cast began.

When the young director saw “Pamela, a Love Story,” she knew who had to become her muse. A woman who knew the highs and sad lows of show business. Someone who was familiar with its back and dark sides and who had half-digested life but then, amazingly, spat it all out again. Someone who never took her dreams away, despite escalating relationships (with Tommy Lee and Kid Rock), despite global embarrassment (the robbery and publication of sex tapes), despite a job that was viewed with amusement in the film industry let.

A film that made her feel close to her ideals

And Pamela Anderson clung to the role of Shelley like a straw in a sea of ​​insignificance. It was her first “real” film. Someone who made her feel close to her ideals: “Fellini, Godard, Herzog, Cassavetes.” Shortly before that, she had appeared on a Broadway stage for the first time, playing, singing and dancing as the criminally inclined Roxy in the musical “Chicago”. That too is a personal triumph. “I don’t even know what I actually did between ‘Baywatch’ and Broadway,” she says, “everything is like a blur, I did a lot of things for money, some I would rather not have done.” She speaks quickly – like the flapping of a dragonfly’s wings.

Shelley is an aging revue dancer in one of Las Vegas’ casinos, driven by the belief that she still practices a real art, one born in the vaudeville theaters of Paris. She is a nostalgic woman with a more than precarious existence who is worried about the rising prices of lemons and organic milk. Her best friend is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, a gambling-addicted cocktail waitress with the ugliest spray tan since Donald Trump. It’s a film about people who are treated like trash by the entertainment juggernaut Las Vegas.

“I was terrified to meet Jamie Lee Curtis,” says Anderson, “she showed up to the first reading with a fresh orange spray tan and as she talked to me her complexion got darker and darker and darker, it was scary.” Of course, the two also became friends in real life. Because in contrast to his great “Baywatch” colleague David Hasselhoff, who never looked Anderson in the eyes during filming, but only at his forehead, Curtis looked her in the eyes.

Was the “Baywatch” crew actually aware at the time that Hasselhoff was a pretty big pop star outside of America? «Oh yes! He gave us his CDs and posters for Christmas and signed them. We had no chance of not knowing that.”

During the filming of “The Last Showgirl” she cooked “nutritious vegetable soup” for the crew from her own garden vegetables, “I baked dog biscuits for their dogs and gave them socks; it was very cold in Las Vegas.”

“This is the most creatively valuable part of my life”

“The Last Showgirl” is a touching little independent film, shot in 18 days, and yes, Pamela Anderson is now a real actress, no longer just the girl who took a series job on the beach because she liked it best anyway beach depended. Is vulnerable, unpretentious, keen to experiment and extremely experienced.

Maybe not so much in film, but in life. Simply an engaging woman: “I’m here, I have more energy than ever, this is the most creatively valuable part of my life.” Still, she doesn’t want to make any plans, the good coincidences keep piling up: “This is the best place I can be: I live in the middle of the mystery of what could happen next.”

And then, as the cinema hall collectively dreams of being mothered by her and fed her favorite dish, pierogi, she talks about her sourdough culture. She gave it a name. “Her name is Astrid and she’s really great.” Astrid. Like Astrid Lindgren?