And as rough around the edges as The Last Showgirl is, it does feature a performance from Anderson that hints at a dramatic force in the making – much like Fawcett’s run of compelling dramatic roles in the Eighties and into the Nineties, from the vigilante thriller Extremities to the domestic violence drama The Burning Bed.
As the ‘Baywatch’ star draws raves for her first dramatic acting role in ‘The Last Showgirl’, Adam White looks back on another pop culture pin-up whose attempt to change her image in the public eye via gritty character parts had only a short-term effect.
Pamela Anderson is the Marilyn Monroe of our time,” the filmmaker Gia Coppola claimed last year, after casting Anderson in her first dramatic movie role.
She’s good in the film, as a fading burlesque dancer haunting the Las Vegas strip, giving a performance that, while warm and endearingly bruised, is also carried by its metatext: Shelly, in The Last Showgirl, is a beautiful symbol of an industry that’s moved on without her, a woman who’s never quite been taken as seriously as she should have been (or wanted to be).
Anderson’s performance, in Coppola’s featherlight paean to old Hollywood glamour The Last Showgirl, has drawn the actor raves (and a recent Golden Globe nomination).
