Pamela Anderson Says the Cure Took Everything She Had in the Bank

Caption: Pamela Anderson at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival. Credit: Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Pamela Anderson accepted the amfAR Award of Courage at the organization’s gala at the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice on September 6, during the Venice Film Festival. Taika Waititi presented the award. In her remarks she described her 2002 hepatitis C diagnosis in the terms her doctor used at the time, saying it was a death sentence and that was what her doctor told her. She said she was given around ten years to live.

What She Said About the Cost

Anderson said the treatment took everything she had in her bank. That is the detail the speech turned on, and it is a specific claim about what it cost her personally to survive an illness that was, for most of the period she carried it, effectively untreatable. She announced she had been cured in 2015. Direct-acting antiviral therapy for hepatitis C reached patients in the years immediately before that.

How She Framed It

She rejected the language of victimhood directly, saying she is not a victim but a victor, and that she is strong and capable. Anderson, 59, has said she contracted hepatitis C by sharing tattoo needles with her then-husband Tommy Lee, with whom she has two adult sons, Brandon Thomas and Dylan Jagger.

Why amfAR Gave It to Her

amfAR funds HIV and AIDS research and works on hepatitis C, where co-infection is a persistent clinical problem. The Award of Courage recognizes public advocacy rather than a performance, which is why the honor sat outside the festival’s competitive prizes even though it was handed out during festival week.

A Different Kind of Venice Appearance

Anderson arrived in Venice this year as the lead of The Naked Gun and left it having given a speech about a diagnosis she carried for thirteen years. The second thing is what the room remembered.

References: Pamela Anderson Opens Up About Recovering After Hepatitis C ‘Death Sentence’ Diagnosis in Venice Speech: ‘I’m Not a Victim, I’m a Victor’ | Pamela Anderson on Overcoming Hepatitis C at amfAR Venice: Not a Victim | Pamela Anderson says hepatitis C diagnosis felt like a ‘death sentence’