Pamela Anderson‘s comeback role in Gia Coppola’s drama The Last Showgirl has won warm praise from critics.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and sees Anderson play Shelley, a dancer who has been in the same show for 30 years and then learns it is closing. Jamie Lee Curtis also stars as Shelley’s friend Annette, a former showgirl turned cocktail waitress.
“I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this role,” Anderson said at the Princess of Wales Theatre following the premiere. “It’s the first time I’ve read a good script, first of all. I’ve never had a script come to me that was coherent. I was like: ‘I’m the only one that can do this. I’ve never felt that strongly about something’.”
While the film’s reviews have been mixed, there’s been particular praise for Anderson’s performance, with some even suggesting it could be Oscar-worthy.
“Anderson embodies her character with such genuine feeling. She finally gets a big, Oscar-bait scene in which she sobs and tears up her costumes. But the low-key devastation she has captured before that is the real acting triumph,” said the BBC.
The Hollywood Reporter labelled her performance as a potential “turning point” in the career of an actress who “has had to struggle to be taken seriously”.
“If the breathy Marilyn voice and constant, nervous verbal diarrhea wear thin at times, Anderson’s transformative performance is undeniably affecting, offering illuminating insights into both the character and the actress playing her, who has had to struggle to be taken seriously. This role should mark a turning point on that front,” they said.
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Deadline had similar praise, writing: “Anderson is a remarkable in this role, which fits her own natural optimism but also gives her the chance to play her emotions laid bare. She will break your heart. I have always thought she was an underrated comedic actress, based especially on her short-lived 2005 sitcom Stacked, but the dramatic ops have not been there before, certainly not on this scale. And she is all-in here.
“In the end, though, as in the beginning, this is Anderson’s moment to shine and, boy does she ever shine — right up to an ending that leaves us hopeful.”
In addition, IndieWire said the film could offer Anderson a later-career breakthrough.
“Like the character at the heart of Coppola’s film — the eponymous ‘last showgirl’ Shelly — Anderson has been forced to spend most of her life contending with unfair expectations and unreasonable requests,” they said. “And while The Last Showgirl follows Shelly as she deals (and, often, doesn’t) with the fallout from a lifetime spent blazing her own trail, Coppola’s film seems destined and designed to do the opposite for Anderson: to open up an entirely new series of possibilities for the actress.
“The Last Showgirl is both the role of a lifetime for Anderson, one that can fully capture her incredible emotional intensity and vulnerability, and (we can only hope) the start of a brand new career for her.”