Talk about a whirlwind! Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson tied the knot after being together for just four days — and their relationship was anything but a breeze.
The twosome met in December 1994 and took a vacation to Cancún six weeks later. Only 96 hours into their getaway, they got married, but their carefree romance quickly soured when they returned to California.
In 1995, Rand Gauthier, a scorned electrician who was fired from a job at the Mötley Crüe artist’s home, stole a sex tape that the couple made while staying on a houseboat at Lake Mead. While the footage wasn’t able to spread around the internet like it would have today, copies were available for purchase — and viewed by thousands.
Anderson and Lee filed a $10 million lawsuit to attempt to prevent the tape from being published, but the suit was eventually dropped. Two decades after its release, the Baywatch star admitted she’d “never seen” the tape.
“I made not one dollar. It was stolen property. We made a deal to stop all the shenanigans,” she said during a 2015 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
Five years later, she clarified during another conversation with Andy Cohen that it wasn’t a sex tape, but was instead “a compilation of vacations that we were naked on.”
Before they called it quits in 1998, the former couple welcomed sons Brandon and Dylan. The drama surrounding their infamous video put a strain on their relationship.
“Not being able to do anything … about [the tape] was adding so much frustration and stress to our relationship,” Lee said during a 2014 episode of 20/20. “It was just consuming us.”
Tensions quickly escalated between the pair, and in 1998, the rocker was arrested after an altercation with his then-wife. He was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading no contest to felony spousal battery.
“I couldn’t understand why Pamela had followed through with pressing charges,” Lee wrote in his band’s 2001 memoir, The Dirt. “She was probably scared and thought I was some crazy, violent monster; she probably thought she was doing the right thing for the kids; and she probably wanted an easy way out of a difficult situation. As much as I loved Pamela, she had a problem dealing with things.”
In 2008, the duo decided to give their romance its “801[st]” try, with the “Sunday” artist telling Rolling Stone that Anderson and their sons had moved back in with him. However, the reunion was short-lived, and the twosome split for good in 2010.
Anderson was also married to Kid Rock from 2006 to 2007, and to Rick Salomon from 2007 to 2008 (and again from 2014 to 2015). She fell into a whirlwind romance with Jon Peters in 2020, and although there were rumors of a marriage, Us Weekly reported in February 2020 that they never obtained a marriage license. She wed Dan Hayhurst in December 2020.
Lee, for his part, was married to Elaine Starchuk from 1984 to 1985 and Heather Locklear from 1986 to 1993. In 2019, he wed Brittany Furlan.
Scroll down to relive Anderson and Lee’s tumultuous relationship: