Pamela Anderson

Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967) is a Canadian-born American actress, sex symbol, glamour model, producer, TV personality, and author. For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee after marrying the drummer for Mötley Crüe, Tommy Lee.

Anderson was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia, 90 km northwest of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, to Carol, a waitress, and Barry Anderson, a furnace repairman. Her great-grandfather, Juho Hyytiäinen, was Finnish, a native of Saarijärvi, and left Finland in 1908. Hyytiäinen changed his name to Anderson, because he wanted a Scandinavian name easier to pronounce for Americans.

The newborn Anderson won fame as the nation's "Centennial Baby", as she was thought, incorrectly, to have been the first baby born on Canada's Centennial Day (she was born at 4:08 in the morning). However, the Campbell River Upper Islander of July 5, 1967 reported a baby born two hours earlier on the same Canada Day. After her birth, her parents, Barry and Carol, and her brother, Gerry Anderson, moved to the town of Comox with Pamela.

After graduating from Highland Secondary School in 1985, Anderson moved to Vancouver and worked as a fitness instructor. During the summer of 1989, Pamela went with her friends to a Canadian football game; at some point during the game she was shown on the stadium screen wearing a Labatt's t-shirt, causing the crowd to cheer for the twenty one year old Anderson. She was taken down to the field to get an ovation from the crowd. Labatt's immediately offered Anderson a modeling contract and she accepted. In late 1989, Pamela decided to model for Playboy magazine: she appeared on the October 1989 cover (credited as Pamela Anderson Ilicic) and decided to move to Los Angeles to continue her modeling career. She was the February 1990 playmate and has appeared in Playboy several times in the 1990s and more recently.

--wikipedia