Pamela Anderson on her first-ever Golden Globes nomination: ‘I never thought it would go like this’
Pamela Anderson certainly didn’t expect to find herself in the thick of awards season. But thanks to her acclaimed performance in Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl,” Anderson landed among this year’s Golden Globe nominees in the Best Drama Actress category.
“What’s wonderful is that this movie was shot in 18 days, and it was less than a couple million dollars. It was really a labor of love. So I’m so excited for the film,” Anderson tells Gold Derby after her first-ever nomination. “It’s very satisfying and really exciting. It shows you that hard work matters. No matter if it’s a tiny little film or a tiny budget or fewer hours, you can really pour your heart into something, and it shows. So I’m just really excited I got the opportunity. And I never thought it would go like this.”
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Directed by Coppola (granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola) and written by Kate Gersten, “The Last Showgirl” focuses on Shelley (Anderson), a Las Vegas dancer whose life is thrown in disarray when the long-running show that has dominated her life abruptly closes. Shelley must figure out what comes next while also trying to reconnect with her daughter (Billie Lourd).
“I never had a project like this, so when I saw myself for the first time the film’s premiere in Toronto with the entire audience, I was just happy to not see me,” Anderson says of her performance. “For me, I feel like this is just the beginning of my career. I worked really hard on this project. I have an acting teacher I’ve worked with for a long time, Ivana Chubbuck. I’ve worked with her on everything from Broadway till now, and a long time ago, but we lost touch. My life kind of took a sideways turn. But here I am back again. It just took me a couple of decades to get back on track. But that’s what is just so fun. You never know and it’s never too late.”
Anderson has been famous for decades, thanks to her modeling appearances and role on “Baywatch.” But despite years of hard work, she was rarely considered for her craft as an actor.
“I always play characters in my personal life. And now I want to just play them in movies and kind of reclaim who I am,” she says about her career going forward. “And that’s all been part of this too. To remember who I am underneath it all, peel it back and then think, ‘Okay I do want to play characters, but I want to play them in film, and I need to be myself in my everyday life instead of this performance.’ Jeff Koons used to tell me, ‘It’s performance art every time you walk out the door.’”
Anderson is in good company in the Best Drama Actress category at the Golden Globes this year. Four of the other nominees are Oscar winners: Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, and Kate Winslet. The other nominee is Fernanda Torres, who has received some of the year’s best notices for her performance in “I’m Still Here.”
“I get chills when you even say that,” she says about the names of her fellow nominees. “Because it has been hard to walk into these rooms with these amazing women and feel like, ‘Oh, I don’t want them to look at me and go, oh god, she’s here.’ I have all those feelings, those insecurities, but I’m trying really hard to walk up to people and shake their hands. It’s nicer now that the film is being seen. I feel more confident when I know people have seen the film so I don’t have to explain myself. People ask me different questions after they’ve seen it. So I can’t wait for the world to see it.”
“The Last Showgirl” received two nominations from the Globes on Monday: Best Drama Actress and Best Song for “Beautiful That Way” (performed by Miley Cyrus and co-written by Cyrus Andrew Wyatt, and Lykke Li).
“It’s a great and interesting ride. It’s a wonderful experience, and I definitely want to see it through to the end,” Anderson says of awards season. “That’s what I keep saying to myself: gratitude gets you through. It’s a wild schedule, but it’s all good for the film. I’m learning so much about how all this works. It’s nothing I could have possibly imagined.”
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