Pamela Anderson was under 30 when a doctor gave her news that sounded like a final sentence: hepatitis C, with a prognosis of barely a decade of life.
It wasn’t the fear of dying that haunted her most. It was thinking about her two young children, and what would happen to them if she wasn’t there. She is believed to have contracted the virus by sharing a tattoo needle with her ex-partner Tommy Lee, and the treatment she underwent afterward drained every dollar she had saved.
In 2015, nearly two decades after that diagnosis, Anderson announced that she was free of the virus. On September 6, 2026, at the amfAR Gala in Venice, she took the stage to receive the Courage Award and said the phrase that sums it all up: “I’m not a victim, I’m a victor”. She is 59 years old, and today hepatitis C, the same disease that nearly cost her her life, is curable in most cases.