Pamela Anderson doesn’t want to be called Pamela Anderson.
During a recent interview with Vogue Scandinavia, the one-time Baywatch star made it clear that she would love to embrace her Finnish roots by adopting her original family name.
“Sometimes I don’t want to be Pamela Anderson. I want to be Pamela Hyytiäinen,” she told said. “I would like to change my name, but they won’t let me. My imagination has run wild with me over the years. I’ve been trying different people on for size. You have to peel it all back, many times, and start over and over again.”
Anderson, who most recently appeared in The Naked Gun remake opposite Liam Neeson, was born in British Columbia, Canada, but her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was a Finnish native. He changed his surname to Anderson when he arrived in North America as an immigrant.
Anderson said her Finnish grandfather Herman Hyytiäinen, a poet, “was the closest person to me in my life” in large part because he believed in folklore, fairies, and “trees that whispered secrets” and shared her love for creativity.
Aside from her iconic role as C.J. Parker on “’Baywatch,” Anderson has experienced somewhat of a career renaissance in recent years after she played herself and reframed her life story in the 2023 Netflix documentary “Pamela, a love story.”
She was also nominated for a Golden Globe award for her critically acclaimed performance in the 2024 indie drama, “The Last Showgirl.”
