Pamela Anderson candidly reflected on her diagnosis with hepatitis C in the late 1990s, when there was no cure for the virus.
“It was a death sentence,” the “Baywatch” alum told the crowd at the 2026 amfAR Gala Venezia, an event to raise funds for medical research, in Venice, Italy, on Sunday, per Variety.
“That’s what my doctor told me — that I probably had around 10 years to live.”
Anderson, now 59, admitted that the diagnosis may have “colored and corrupted [her] decisions.”
“It was not fear of death, but fear of what might happen to my young children,” she added, referring to her kids, Brandon Thomas, 30, and Dylan Jagger, 28, whom she shares with her ex-husband Tommy Lee.
“It turned my life inside out.”
Anderson previously shared that she contracted hepatitis C when she and Lee, who were married from 1995 to 1998, shared a tattoo needle.
Medications to cure hepatitis C were approved in 2011, and Anderson was free of the disease by 2015.
The actress told Sunday’s crowd that it “took everything [she] had in [her] bank” to undergo treatment.
Despite being free from the disease, Anderson explained her “experience of shame and guilt was also an unconscious journey” that “stays” with and “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 added. “And I presented myself as such.”
However, the “Last Showgirl” star refuses to view herself as a victim.
“I’m a victor,” Anderson said. “I am strong and capable, more now than I could ever dream of. I’m not the damsel in distress, no matter how easy that role is to play.”
Anderson was honored with the Award of Courage at the nonprofit’s event, whose mission is dedicated to ending AIDS.
The “Naked Gun” star first shared her diagnosis in 2002 and told People in 2015, ahead of her cure, that she didn’t have symptoms and was living life normally.
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