Who Is Pamela Anderson's Eldest Son Brandon Thomas Lee?

This article references domestic violence and addiction.

Back in the 1990s, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were inescapable. The whirlwind romance between the Mötley Crüe frontman and the "Baywatch" star captivated fans, and things really reached a fever pitch when their infamous sex tape scandal hit the headlines. In 1995, someone stole a video of the two of them getting intimate on their honeymoon, and then sold it online without the former couple's permission. These were the early days of the internet, and we suddenly had more access to celebrities than ever before ... and, accordingly, we'd developed new ways to hurt them.

As Anderson attempted to navigate this difficult period — in the spotlight, no less — she was also navigating life as a new mother. Anderson and Lee's rocky relationship produced two sons quite quickly: Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee. As "Baywatch" went off the air and Anderson's relationship with Tommy fell apart, the former devoted herself to raising her children.

Anderson's sons grew up to be gorgeous, and Anderson's eldest son Brandon is famous in his own right. He's been part of the cast of an iconic television show, made headlines for a long-simmering family feud, and was even nominated for an Emmy. In recent years, Brandon has devoted himself to returning his mom's love, setting out on a multi-project effort to revive her public image and finally get her the respect she's long deserved. Read on to learn all about Brandon Thomas Lee.

Brandon Thomas Lee was born on June 5, 1996, into a toxic family situation. As Tommy Lee wrote in Mötley Crüe's joint autobiography "The Dirt" (via Rolling Stone), Anderson found out she was pregnant when she swallowed half a bottle of Advil after an argument and wound up in the hospital. Tommy shrugged it off as "a plea for attention" — quite the insensitive thing to say — and once Brandon was born, the arguments only increased.

Tommy wrote that Anderson was giving their children all her time and energy, and that made him angry. "Unable to step back and see the situation from any reasonable perspective, I turned into a whiny, needy little brat," he wrote. His resentment resulted in a major blowup: shoving, throwing things, screaming at each other, punching, kicking, and worse. "I took Brandon's hand, and she pulled him away from me," Tommy wrote. "Suddenly, we were wrestling over him and everyone was getting mental again. No matter what I did, the situation just escalated. As I wrested Brandon from her, I pushed her and she tumbled backward."

Shortly thereafter, Anderson filed for divorce. She and Tommy would continue to get back together and break up again a few times, ultimately working out a way to co-parent their kids that didn't involve them being romantically involved. "I don't think it had a negative impact on me," Brandon later said on an episode of "The Hills: New Beginnings." "I know they love each other very much."

Though Brandon Thomas Lee insists that his parents' divorce didn't affect him growing up, he has acknowledged that their staggering level of fame was indeed confusing to him as a child. Wherever Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee went, cameras followed; that meant cameras were following Brandon too. In fact, he grew up thinking cameras followed everybody. He later told KTLA, "I remember going out to lunch with one of my friends one day, and I was like, 'Why does no one take photos of you guys?' Always, my parents told me that was normal. They were trying to make me feel normal."

Anderson has spoken about how difficult it was to shield her children from the glare of the media spotlight. In an interview with Ronan Farrow for Interview magazine, she recalled her desperation to keep the world away from her kids. Once, someone even tried to kidnap Dylan Jagger Lee, Brandon's younger brother. "I didn't grow up in a public family so I had to learn quickly how to keep them safe," Anderson said, "without them feeling like they were any different than anybody else." To that end, she ultimately sent her sons to boarding school in Canada, hoping that the distance would make the media furor around their existence seem less stressful.

As he grew up, Brandon Thomas Lee began stepping into the spotlight of his own accord, including stints as a model (including for Dolce & Gabbana) and an actor (including, fittingly, in the 2017 adaptation of "Baywatch"). He also struggled with drug misuse and addiction after getting into the party scene at a young age.

"It was really fun for a while then it goes from fun to, 'Oh s***, what's happening?' to straight up miserable, to unsustainable," Lee later told The Herald Sun. Ultimately, he recognized that his hard-partying lifestyle was preventing him from branching out and finding his own lane in the industry, so he made some major changes. "Ever since I got sober, I just feel like everything's gotten better for me. I've become a better actor. I've become a better worker. I've become a better person. I'm not gonna lie, in L.A. it's really f**king hard to avoid temptation," he told Interview in 2019. "But my career has become so important to me that partying isn't worth it anymore."

In 2018, Brandon Thomas Lee and Tommy Lee made headlines. That March, when Lee was only 21, news broke of a fight between father and son. The rockstar took to X to clarify the situation. "My fiancé and I were in bed when my son busted into the room and assaulted me. I asked him to leave the house and he knocked me unconscious," Tommy wrote. That fiancée, for the record, is former Vine star Brittany Furlan, and they have since gotten married; here's what Pamela Anderson really thinks about her ex-husband's new wife.

That day, Tommy had taken to X to tweet some harsh things about Anderson after he saw her discuss their relationship on television. "Think she'd find something new to discuss instead of rehashing old s*** but I guess she has nothing else going on & needs attention. Signed, 'The abuser' (who she texts everyday & asks for me back)," Tommy wrote. TMZ reported that Brandon had acted in self-defense, punching his father after a drunken argument.

Speaking with People, Brandon insisted that the incident was a result of his father's alcoholism. "I have and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement as needed," Brandon said, insisting that he'd tried to stage an intervention. "I love my father and just want to see him sober, happy and healthy."

In April 2018, People confirmed with the Los Angeles District Attorney's office that they had declined to pursue charges against Brandon Thomas Lee for the assault. "[The case was dismissed] due to victim unavailability," a spokesperson said, perhaps suggesting that it was Tommy Lee who had declined to testify against his son.

Still, even though the legal issue went away, the feud continued. A few months later, on Father's Day, Tommy took to Instagram to complain about his sons. Sharing a photo of himself with his own father and a picture of him holding baby Brandon, Tommy tore into his son in the caption. "Being a father ain't easy!" he wrote, explaining that his own dad had tried to raise him to care about other people and about his possessions. "When I had a child, my first child, I wanted to instill those same virtues into him," Tommy continued. "Sometimes I feel like I failed as a father, because my kids don't know the value of things." He concluded the post by writing, "I love my boys but they can be a******* too...and that's the truth."

Brandon responded on his Instagram story (via People), posting a video of his father asleep on the ground. "Once again painting our family in a negative light. Who the f*** are you? Just move on dude..." Brandon wrote, "or I'll put you right back to f****** sleep."

2018 was a rough period for Brandon Thomas Lee and his father Tommy Lee, but it seems that by the end of the year, they'd made up. That December, the elder Lee posted a photo on Instagram showing himself and his son in a bear hug. "I love you son," he captioned it, tagging his son's account. According to People, Brandon commented, "Love you Dad." He posted a photo of his father to his Instagram story, and his younger brother Dylan Jagger Lee commented, "Love u guys."

On a 2019 episode of "The Hills: New Beginnings," Brandon opened up about his complicated relationship with his rockstar father. "Me and my dad have had our ups and downs for sure," he reflected. "This guy got famous at 18 years old, and most people know that when you get famous at a certain age ... you end up staying that age." He confessed to being not too dissimilar from his father, concluding, "That doesn't mean I have to be like him."

In 2019, Brandon Thomas Lee added another gig to his growing entertainment industry resumé: reality star. As previously noted, he was on "The Hills: New Beginnings," a reboot that brought back some of the iconic MTV show's original stars while also adding some fresh faces to the mix. Pamela Anderson fully supported her son's foray into reality TV, telling Us Weekly that she wants him to do whatever he wants to do. "He's invincible. Brandon can do anything," Anderson told the outlet. "He's on his journey and he's going to have a great time and I'm sure it's going to be very, very entertaining because he is so funny."

In a profile for Teen Vogue, Lee said his goal was still to act and model on his own, not to become famous purely through reality television. "I'm still acting, I'm still working in fashion, that's my main focus," he said. "This is just following me around in my life and I feel like it just gives people the opportunity to get to know me."

Lee claimed to have never seen an episode of the original show, professing total ignorance about series star Lauren Conrad. He was, however, cast because of his friendship with Kristin Cavallari's ex-boyfriend Brody Jenner.

Brandon Thomas Lee told Teen Vogue that he joined the cast of "The Hills: New Beginnings" in part to get out from under his parents' shadows. "I get discounted by people thinking I'm just some spoiled celebrity kid," he said. "People don't know how hard I've worked and what I've accomplished for myself." He shared a similar sentiment in an aforementioned conversation with Interview. "Dylan and I haven't taken a dollar from our parents since we were in high school," he said. "We've been working our a**es off to buy a house, buy a car, and pay for music equipment and acting lessons." Evidently, that work ethic has served him well: Brandon Thomas Lee has a stunning net worth.

That said, Lee didn't use "The Hills" to distance himself from his mom entirely. On the premiere episode of the MTV reality show, Pamela Anderson not only saged his new house but asked some prying questions. Lee told Elle that he didn't even mind having his love life interrogated by his mother on national television. "One of the things I love about my mom is that she's a hopeless romantic," he said. "She's nuts, because of her life. But come on, every mom in the world wants you to be happy."

"The Hills: New Beginnings" did, indeed, chronicle Lee's love life — he dated Daniella Beckerman on the show, and past romances with stars like Bella Thorne got a mention — but he told Elle that he was quite unlucky in the relationship department. He insisted, "I swear, girls ghost me."

Tommy Lee, Brandon Thomas Lee's father, is covered in tattoos. Brandon has a bunch of his own, which he happily showed off in a video for MTV in support of "The Hills: New Beginnings." There's a tattoo on the back of his neck reading "11:11," for example, and he insisted that it carries major meaning for him. "That's like, a lucky number for me," he said. "I see 11:11 on my phone, like, twice a day, and always something good is happening." 

There's also his massive chest tattoo, which features a dagger and the words "For Those I Love, I Will Sacrifice." The tattoo was completed by a Las Vegas artist who's tattooed Tommy many times. "I just think it carries with it like, such a message of like, friendship, and family, and loyalty," he said. 

Finally, Brandon has a phrase tattooed across his collar bone, reading "If I Were You, If You Were Me." He explained, "So, pretty much only thing that means is like, putting yourself in other people's shoes." The phrase is bracketed by roses. 

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the entertainment industry to shut down, Brandon Thomas Lee's attention turned to his mother. The TV-watching public's attention was focused on the former "Baywatch" star, too; in 2022, Hulu released "Pam & Tommy," a scripted series about the sex tape scandal that dominated her narrative in the 1990s. Suddenly it seemed like the whole world was focused on the sad and tragic life of Pamela Anderson, but she didn't like thinking about her career that way. She wrote a memoir that was published in 2023, "Love, Pamela."

Her son had an idea: they should turn his mom's life into a documentary that tells her story, not the story the media had always told about her. "There's such a visual aspect to this woman's life that I really wanted represented," Lee told a panel (per The Hollywood Reporter), "whether it's her career in entertainment, photos. You're such an icon of so many people, and you're such a tastemaker in a visual medium that I thought this was the opportunity to represent that." 

"Pamela, a Love Story" was well received, and so was Lee's part in making it happen. As a producer on the film, Lee picked up an Emmy nomination in the documentary category.

After the success of "Pamela, a Love Story," Brandon Thomas Lee took on a new role: rehabilitating Pamela Anderson's public image. "My personal mission was to give my mom the opportunities she gave me as a child. She would do anything for me. She showed up and was a very good mother," he reflected to Variety. "And at a certain point in your life, you become a protector."

To that end, Lee found her a project that would bring her the critical respectability she'd been chasing her entire career. He brought her "The Last Showgirl," a film directed by Gia Coppola. The movie is about an aging Vegas showgirl who realizes that her show is closing, and for the first time in a long time, she needs to figure out what comes next. Lee recognized the parallels to Anderson's life, and he told her she should do the film. "It was such a breath of fresh air, and it was so impactful, and it was something I knew she could deliver on," he said.

Lee produced that movie, too, and it all paid off. Anderson was nominated for a Golden Globe, and when she walked the red carpet, her son was by her side. It's safe to say that Pamela Anderson's son has transformed her career.

Brandon Thomas Lee had been trying to turn around Pamela Anderson's public image for several years by the time she was offered "The Naked Gun," a reboot of the iconic comedy spoof movie series. It was on that set that she met Liam Neeson, and when the film was released in July 2025, fans everywhere were delighted to learn that Pamela Anderson apparently has Liam Neeson wrapped around her finger. While they've yet to confirm their romantic connection, they are one of the most talked-about new rumored couples in Hollywood.

Lee accompanied his mother to the film's premiere, standing on the carpet alongside Neeson and his own sons. "They have such a great onscreen chemistry," he told Access Hollywood at the premiere (via Us Weekly). "It was so, so incredible and they both did such an amazing job. And it's actually really cool to see both of them in their comedic element." It's cool to see Lee in his element, too, supporting his mother wherever he goes.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, or needs help with addiction issues, reach out to the relevant resources below:

• Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

• Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).