Pamela Anderson’s ex Mario Van Peebles is “happy” for her amid the success from her Netflix documentary and new memoir.
“I’m happy to see Pamela win on her own terms, Van Peebles, 66, exclusively told Page Six via email. “She didn’t follow anyone else’s career, she made her own.
“In Hollywood, the pretty people are in front of the camera and the smart ones behind it, Pamela is a bit of both.”
The “Heartbreak Ridge” actor dated Anderson when she first came to Hollywood from Canada around 1990.
The “Baywatch” star, 55, wrote glowingly of her romance with the “New Jack City” director.
Anderson revealed in her memoir that she had a crush on the actor, having met him in Vancouver on the set of “21 Jump Street” in 1989 and he asked her out to dinner when she moved to town.
At the time, she was living platonically in producer Jon Peters’ palatial Bel Air estate, which concerned Van Peebles.
“I think you need to get your things and get out of here,” she remembered him saying to her. “There’s more to this story, and I’m afraid you won’t be able to get out of this if you wait too long.”
The “Bloodline” actor explained he had two reasons to be concerned about her at the time.
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”One, that she would have the career she wanted, and, two, that this good-hearted young woman wouldn’t get crushed,” he told us.
Anderson did take Van Peebles’ advice and moved out of the “A Star is Born” producer’s abode. She enjoyed spending time at Van Peebles’s home and meeting his mother and father, director Melvin Van Peebles, who spoke to her about the Black Panthers, Harvey Milk, and the anti-war movement.
In her memoir, Anderson revealed that she and Van Peebles hiked to the Hollywood sign and “made love for the first time in a field of long, soft grasses, as horses ran by dangerously close, almost trampling us.”
Van Peebles told us the pair “laughed” over her identification as a sex symbol.
“We both laughed about that,” he said. “She had done Playboy and I was in People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Men of the Year’ or whatever. Enjoy it while you got it and don’t take it too seriously, both of us knew that, and as I often say, ‘Pretty is temporary, dumb is forever.’ Pam is still pretty and she’s never been dumb.”
“Pam is resilient, but she also has this charming vulnerability and ability to see herself in the play of life. And when she falls she gets back up with a laugh,” he added.
Van Peebles hasn’t watched the documentary yet, as he’s been busy editing a western called “Outlaws” that stars Whoopi Goldberg as the real-life historical figure Stagecoach Mary, the first black female star route mail carrier in the US.
“We have a film that embraces black historical characters at a time when Texas is taking the word slavery out of the history books and Florida is banning black history courses.”
Anderson, meanwhile, detailed her past relationship with Kelly Slater and with ex-husband Tommy Lee in her new documentary and memoir as well.
