The Golden Globe nominee stars in the dark satire ‘Rosebush Pruning,’ in theaters now
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NEED TO KNOW
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Pamela Anderson stars in the dark comedy Rosebush Pruning as the matriarch of a wealthy and dysfunctional family
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She tells PEOPLE about her new role and her busy summer, which included her son Dylan Jagger Lee’s June wedding
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The actress also teases what’s next, including her first-ever appearance at the Venice Film Festival — and her hope to become a grandmother
It seems fitting that Pamela Anderson, an avid gardener, would star in a movie called Rosebush Pruning.
But the dark satire from Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz — a “visionary artist,” raves Anderson — is no Edenic paradise. As one of the characters ominously notes early on: “People are roses. Families are rosebushes. Rosebushes need pruning.”
The “wild” movie is “shocking in a good way. But not shock for shock value — to tell a story,” says Anderson.
The actress is home on Vancouver Island during her mid-July interview with PEOPLE after a stint abroad: First, in London filming the family drama Alma, then in Saint-Tropez for her son Dylan Jagger Lee’s June 26 wedding to Paula Bruss — an “emotional” day, she says.
She’s already back to work, promoting the passion project in which she plays a character simply known as the mother. Anderson stars as a wealthy American matriarch who moved her family — husband (Tracy Letts) and their four adult children, Jack (Jamie Bell), Ed (Callum Turner), Robert (Lukas Gage) and Anna (Riley Keough) — to Spain a few years prior to the events of the movie.
In this parody of privilege from Oscar-nominated writer Efthimis Filippou (The Lobster), the members of the family don’t do much besides lounge around their fabulous home and talk about their designer clothes.
Credit: Mubi
“I do believe there’s this kind of emptiness that comes from wealth for no good reason,” says Anderson, who plays the mother with a bit of a callous streak. (In one scene, she refers to a hypothetical granddaughter as the c-word.)
When the family learns Jack is going to move out and get a home of his own with his aspiring musician girlfriend Martha (Elle Fanning) — a young woman of humble means — the family begins to come apart in pitch-black-funny fashion. Think American Horror Story mixed with a National Geographic special on feral animals.
Credit: Mubi
“It’s not going to be for everybody,” Anderson concedes about the movie, which includes sex, abuse and an extremely disturbing teeth-whitening process. “People are going to have feelings about it. It’s not an easy ride. But that’s what the movie’s for.”
The film was a chance for the former Baywatch actress to show another side of her talents after taking a career pivot, moving from bombshell roles to projects that highlighted her range.
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After an acclaimed turn as Roxie Hart in Broadway’s Chicago in 2022, she won raves as a Las Vegas performer in 2024’s The Last Showgirl (earning her that Golden Globe nomination as well as Oscar buzz). She followed it up in 2025, playing a femme fatale in The Naked Gun remake and a stint at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real.
“I want to work with risk-takers. I want to challenge myself and even my mindset when it comes to storytelling. I want to play all sorts of different roles,” she says, adding about her part in Rosebush Pruning: “And it was also fun to have gray hair. Why not?”
After briefly going red late last year for her role in Michael Cera‘s upcoming movie Love Is Not the Answer, she’s been back to her iconic blonde. Anderson shared earlier this year on Today that Dylan, 28, requested she go back to her signature honey hue for his nuptials. “Mom, can you be blonde for my wedding?” the actress, who also shares son Brandon Thomas Lee, 30 with her ex, musician Tommy Lee, recalled him saying.
The June celebration was “wonderful,” says Anderson. “I couldn’t have been happier.”
Credit: Jason Mendez/Getty
“It’s so emotional. It kind of catches you off guard even because we’ve all been living such independent lives. My boys are very independent and they’ve all lived on their own for many years and [he and Paula have] been together for nine years, but it really did feel like, oh, ‘Dylan is not mine anymore. He and Paula belong together.’”
“He’s just wrapping up his honeymoon now. So they’ve been on a roll. It’s been really exciting to watch. I’m so happy for them,” she says.
Is Anderson eager to become a grandmother? “Well, that’s up to them, but I think that’s in the plan,” she says. “I can’t wait to be a grandma.”
“I am living kind of a grandma life, aren’t I?” she jokes. “I’m always in my garden. The only thing I don’t do yet is knit or do embroidery.”
Speaking of her garden, Anderson has been able to enjoy her happy place these last few weeks, which she frequently shows off in Instagram photos and videos. “There’s lots going on in the garden and you can never be bored. It’s where I start every day,” says the Sonsie skincare brand founder.
Credit: Pamela Anderson/Instagram
“All of my ideas come to me in the garden. And even when I’m confused about something, if I’ll read in the garden, I will think through what my next choices are with scripts. It just clears my mind. Something about nature and just being surrounded by this really positive life force, you can make better decisions in the garden, I think,” she says.
“And it’s good workout!” adds Anderson. “I think it’s better than going to the gym, doing garden work.”
Soon enough, she’ll be back to movie-promotion work. Her upcoming film Place to Be, costarring Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi, will debut at the Venice Film Festival later this summer.
“This will be my first time in Venice. It’s very exciting,” she says. “I feel like I’ve just begun my career.”
Rosebush Pruning is in theaters now.
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