Gia Coppola had a problem.
“Sheis the Marilyn of our time,'” Coppola recalls.
“I find her to be a very interesting human being.
Pamela Anderson in ‘The Last Showgirl’.Zoey Grossman
“I read it and I thought, I have to do this.
It’s life or death.
Its really important.”
Pamela Anderson and Gia Coppola at the 20th Zurich Film Festival in Oct. 2024.Andreas Rentz/Getty
Want more movie news?
She realized, “I have nothing to lose.
Sure, she’s appeared in some two dozen films, a handful of those as herself.
Pamela Anderson in ‘The Last Showgirl’.Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
“I want to be defined by what I do and not what has been done to me.”
But then there’s Annette, a former showgirl-turned-cocktail waitress, played byJamie Lee Curtis.
“I called my wig maker and we were off to the races.”
Jamie Lee Curtis in ‘The Last Showgirl’.Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
Curtis was in her red wig the first time Anderson met her.
She had also just gotten a spray tan.
“It was amazing.”
Pamela Anderson in ‘The Last Showgirl’.Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The look, though, was very intentional.
And that was her goal with Annette.
Beyond the exterior, Curtis says she knew who Annette was on the inside.
“I know hustlers.
Eventually, she became a cocktail waitress.
“I was like, ‘Well, will you do that?’
And she’s like, ‘You’re gonna get me on a podium to dance?'”
Curtis remembers it a little differently, less as a question and more matter-of-factly.
“I thought she was joking.
Five minutes later, Curtis came up with a dance to that song and the camera was rolling.
“Everything I do is, ‘F–k it, let’s do it.’
And that was powerful to me.
There’s something so vulnerable about that idea that you’re pouring yourself into something that nobody cares about.
Clearly, it was poignant for me.”
But wasn’t that always her goal, growing up in Canada?
“I don’t know what my dreams were.
I was always a very imaginative kid.
And then my life took a different turn.”
But that curiosity never went away.
“I feel like this is just the beginning of my career.”
