Pamela Anderson says she spent everything she had to pay for an early-stage hepatitis C treatment because her insurance company would not cover it.
The 59-year-old actress described the ordeal while accepting amfAR’s Award of Courage on Sunday in Venice. amfAR is a nonprofit focused on ending HIV/AIDS that also backs hepatitis C research and advocacy work.
Anderson was diagnosed with hepatitis C in the late 1990s and went public with it in 2002. She has said she contracted the disease from sharing needles with her ex-husband, Tommy Lee, a claim the Mötley Crüe drummer has denied.
“Back in the late ’90s, when I was diagnosed with hepatitis C, there was no cure,” Anderson said, according to multiple reports. “I’m sure that colored and corrupted my decisions. It was not fear of death but fear of what might happen to my young children. It turned my life inside out.”
A decade later, a cure finally existed. Getting it meant paying for it herself.
“Ten blurry years later, there was a cure. I was lucky. I was offered it in its early stages, and it took everything I had in my bank to pay for it. It wasn’t covered by insurance yet, and I felt tremendous guilt that others weren’t granted the same access.”
Anderson completed an FDA-approved, yearlong course of treatment and announced in 2015 that she was hepatitis C free.
She said the financial hit was only part of what she carried. “But my experience of shame and guilt was also an unconscious journey. It stays with me; it haunts me,” she said. “And just like the sexual abuse that I endured as a child, it felt like it was carved into my forehead: Damaged goods. And I presented myself as such.”
Anderson rebuilt her career in the years since, appearing in “The Last Showgirl,” “The Naked Gun” and “Rosebush Pruning.” Her newest film, “Place to Be,” premieres Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival.
“My truth has come through my work, finding ways to express myself through the arts. It gave me the ammunition I needed, a fertile life to use and play in,” she said. “I’m not a victim, I’m a victor. 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.”
