Pamela Anderson didn’t start going makeup-free to save time, but it’s a welcome outcome.
During the Jan. 8 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, The Last Showgirl star, 57, discussed her decision to ditch her glam in recent years — and how its impacted her life — after co-host Kelly Ripa pointed out that she is “an extremely low maintenance star.”
“You don’t travel with a glam squad. How liberating is that for you?” Ripa, 54, asked as co-host Mark Consuelos added, “And how much time have you gotten back?”
“Oh, I’ve saved a lot of time,” Anderson replied, revealing that her kids — she shares two adult sons with ex Tommy Lee — “used to say that I spent half my life in a makeup chair.”
Anderson has been there and “done” that, she told the hosts. “I mean, I loved it,” she said of having around-the-clock glam. “It’s fun when you’re new in the business and you get all this attention. But I feel like I’ve done that and I kind of just wanted to simplify and keep it low key.”
The actress also said that going make-up free affected her acting career in a positive way.
“I feel like I could focus better when I did the film, too,” she said of working on the Gia Coppola-directed flick. “Of course you have … there’s a whole team around you, doing that. But in my personal life, even on red carpets and a couple of magazine covers, I’ve gotten out of wearing makeup and it’s been fun.”
Ripa then explained that while Live was on break for two weeks, she followed in the star’s footsteps and went glam-free as well. “And I was like, ‘Pamela Anderson is a genius,’ ” she recalled. “This is how to live! This is the way to live!”
“I love glamor. I love being elegant, sophisticated. You know, I love that. But I feel like, this is just what works best to me,” Anderson responded. “I love makeup in a photoshoot or on a movie to play a character. But for me I feel like, even with this HD or different kind of photography, I don’t know if it makes me look better to be full face of makeup. So I’m just experimenting.”
“I try a little blush sometimes, a little lip color, you know, sometimes,” she added. “But then I kind of go back to [natural].”
Anderson first started going makeup-free after her long-term makeup artist died of cancer in 2019, but first made headlines for the decision about four years later, when she showed up for Paris Fashion Week in the fall of 2023 without an ounce of makeup.
While discussing her new, glam-free appearance at the time, the actress told Vogue France, “I don’t know, something just kind of came over me and I was dressing in these beautiful clothes and I thought, ‘I don’t want to compete with the clothes.’ ”
“I’m not trying to be the prettiest girl in the room. I feel like it’s just freedom,” she added. “It’s a release.”
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Since then, Anderson — who last year announced she’d cofounded Sonsie Skin — has appeared at several other events with a fresh face. Most recently, she hit the red carpet at the 2025 Golden Globes — where she was nominated for her role in The Last Showgirl — in a silky, black Oscar de la Renta gown, matching opera gloves, Pandora jewelry, true to form, glowing skin.
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