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Pamela Anderson was told by doctors that she was going to die.
Doctors were just telling her her most likely prognosis with the medicines that existed at the time.
The Naked Gun star did manage to survive, thanks to a medical breakthrough.
Now, Pamela does not consider herself to be a victim. She sees herself as a victor.
‘I probably had around 10 years to live,’ Pamela Anderson recalls
In the late 1990s, Pamela Anderson received her hepatitis C diagnosis, which she attributed to having shared a tattoo needle with abusive ex-husband Tommy Lee.
Speaking at the 2026 amfAR Gala Venezia on Sunday, September 6, Variety covered as the actress elaborated upon the harrowing health journey.
“It was a death sentence,” she told the crowd, who were there to raise funds for medical research.
At the time of her diagnosis, there was no cure to hep C.
“That’s what my doctor told me,” Pamela recalled. “That I probably had around 10 years to live.”
Speaking to the audience in Venice, Pamela admitted that her terminal diagnosis likely “colored and corrupted my decisions.”
She explained: “It was not fear of death, but fear of what might happen to my young children.”
Those children were no longer so young. Those total smokeshows are 30-year-old Brandon Thomas and 28-year-old Dylan Jagger.
“It turned my life inside out,” Pamela characterized.
Fortunately, a medical cure for hepatitis C was approved in 2011. By 2015, she was free of the disease.
‘I’m a victor’
Though Pamela Anderson was able to recover from hepatitis C, it came with a cost. In a literal sense.
She admitted on Sunday that the medication “took everything I had in my bank.”
Additionally, Pamela expressed that her “experience of shame and guilt was also an unconscious journey” that “stays” with and still “haunts” her.
“And just like the sexual abuse that I endured as a child, it felt like it was carved into my forehead: Damaged goods,” she admitted.
Pamela added: “And I presented myself as such.”
“I’m a victor,” Pamela declared.
“I am strong and capable, more now than I could ever dream of,” she expressed.
“I’m not the damsel in distress,” Pamela asserted, “no matter how easy that role is to play.”
At the Sunday event, she received the Award of Courage.
Pamela may have some troubling ideas on multiple topics, but her courage is unquestionable. We’re glad that a cure for hepatitis C was discovered and greenlit. Modern medicine truly is a marvel.
Pamela Anderson: My Doctors Gave Me 10 Years to Live was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.