Pamela Anderson was given just 10 years to live: ‘It was a death sentence’
Pamela Anderson has revealed she was delivered a diagnosis that amounted to a “death sentence” at the height of her fame in the 1990s.
Speaking at the amfAR Venezia Gala 2026, hosted by Taika Waititi and presented by Orlando Bloom, the 59-year-old actress recalled the day she was diagnosed.
Pamela Anderson has shared a moving insight into her life at the amfAR foundation for aids research gala. AP Photo/Scott A Garfitt
“Back in the late 90s when I was diagnosed with hepatitis C there was no cure,” she said as she collected the Award of Courage at the AIDS charity event.
“It was a death sentence. That’s what my doctor told me, that I probably had around 10 years to live.”
The feeling that her diagnosis made her “damaged goods” led Anderson on a destructive path of self-sabotage.
“I’m sure that coloured and corrupted my decisions,” she said.
“It was not fear of death, but fear of what might happen to my young children. It turned my life inside out.”
Anderson has previously claimed she contracted hepatitis C by sharing tattoo needles with her first husband, Tommy Lee.
They had two sons together – Brandon Thomas, born in 1996, and Dylan Jagger, who was born the following year – and Anderson feared what would happen to her sons if she died young.
Fortunately, she never had to find out.
Anderson previously claimed sharing needles with ex Tommy Lee led to her hepatitis C diagnosis. WireImage
By the mid-2010s, a new treatment was available for hepatitis C and Anderson was offered the chance to try it, at a cost.
“I was lucky, I was offered it in its early stages and it took everything I had in my bank to pay for it [because] it wasn’t covered by insurance yet,” she said.
Though Anderson felt enormous guilt that other hepatitis C patients couldn’t afford the treatment yet, she was overjoyed to have a cure.
Today she’s free of the infection but she confessed that the “shame and guilt” she carried for the 10 years she lived with hepatitis C linger even now.
“It stays with me. It haunts me,” she said.
Anderson turned her own pain into a force for change and has spent more than a decade campaigning to raise awareness and education around hepatitis C, including the fact that there is now a cure.
Today she can speak about her diagnosis freely, but Anderson confessed she struggled with shame and stigma for years. Getty
This isn’t the first time she’s addressed her diagnosis, but it’s the only time she’s gone into such intimate detail about how living with hepatitis C affected her.
The Last Showgirl star previously spoke about her diagnosis in 2002, when she revealed it publicly for the first time, and in 2003 when she joked that she didn’t expect to survive for another 10 or 15 years.
Her comments sparked widespread concern at the time, but Anderson didn’t reveal the deep shame and stigma she carried all those years until now.
Anderson has experienced an incredible Hollywood comeback recently, shedding the sex symbol image that was forced upon her in her 20s and revealing her new self to the world.
Gone is the skintight red swimsuit and bold makeup, swapped for a bare-faced approach to beauty.
“I really feel powerful right now when everything’s very pared down,” she told WWD in February 2023.
“I like to see my freckles. I like when my hair isn’t done. I like just a really fresh face.”
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