It's been a BANNER YEAR for PAMELA ANDERSON.

NEW a But with a SLATE of PROJECTS and SECOND CHANCE at SUPERSTARDOMthis time, on her OWN TERMSthe very best is YET to COME.

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It's the morning after the Met Gala, and I'm at the Pierre hotel in New York to meet Pamela Anderson, whose appearance was one of the talking points of the night.

She arrived on the arm of her elder son, Brandon, wearing a crystal-encrusted Tory Burch gown, long-sleeved and high-necked. Her distinctive blond mane had been cut into a chin-grazing bob and microfringe, the better to display a spectacular diamond ear cuff and matching stud, while Brandon had a corresponding diamond brooch.

When Anderson opens the door to her suite, she is dressed down in ripped jeans and a white T-shirt. Her feet are bare, as is her face, and she has pulled back the bob into a little ponytail. The dress is lying on the sofa in an attitude of exhaustion, so padded that it almost looks as though its wearer is still inside.

“It was like armor,” says Anderson. “It was interesting to carry the weight of it. I'm possibly doing something on Joan of Arc, but I didn’t realize I was actually kind of morphing into her, with the hair and everything. That's what's fun about these evenings: They're like little movies. You can just create one in your head.”

Her jewelry, lab-grown diamonds by Pandora (Anderson serves as a global brand ambassador), had been repurposed from the necklace she wore for last year’s gala, in a conscious demonstration of her own (and the brand's) focus on environmental responsibility. “It's part of why I love them,” she says of the partnership. “Sustainable, cruelty-free, the kindness, the generosity, the spirit of family...” Since deciding not to wear makeup, following the death of her longtime makeup artist in 2019, she has discovered a new appreciation for gemstones. “When I was doing the heavy glam, I didn’t wear any jewelry,” she explains.

“I try to balance it out. I think you can only do so much.”

Anderson's performance this past year in director Gia Coppola's