Why Did Tommy Lee And Pamela Anderson Really Break Up?

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Former celebrity couple Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee were the whirlwind romance of the mid-to-late-'90s. They knew each other for only four days before deciding to get married on a beach in Cancún in 1995.

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It's been decades since the actress and the Mötley Crüe drummer's romance first made headlines, but why did the pair really break up? Did it have anything to do with their stolen sex tape?

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Why did Tommy and Pam break up?

It wouldn't have been surprising if Pam and Tommy's sex tape was part of the reason for their split. Not long after they wed, the video was stolen from a safe in their home by their former electrician Rand Gauthier, who had taken the safe as the $20,000 payment he claimed Tommy owed him for his work.

It didn't take long for the tape to become widely distributed, selling online for $59.95 apiece. In 1996, the couple filed lawsuits against anyone they believed possessed a copy.

Their private video was one of the first things to go "viral" online after hundreds of thousands of copies of it were sold through the internet following the conclusion of a lawsuit that only addressed the distribution of the tape's physical copies.

But despite the strain something like that being released to the public would put on a relationship, the reason for their divorce clearly went beyond their tape.

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Pam filed for divorce from Tommy in 1998.

The pressure of their leaked sex tape likely put a strain on the pair's bond, but Pam didn't file for divorce from Tommy until 1998, three years after they had initially wed.

By this time, the pair had two children, Brandon and Dylan (born in 1996 and 1997). Their relationship had already lasted longer than many of their naysayers believed it would.

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While Pam and Tommy's children were still very young, Tommy was arrested on charges of spousal abuse. During an argument, Tommy allegedly kicked Pam in the back and bottom three times while she was holding Dylan (who was still an infant at the time). This left the Baywatch star with multiple red marks along her back.

It wasn't long after Tommy's arrest that Pam filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences," and requested that the last name "Lee" be dropped from her name.

Tommy ultimately pled no contest to the charges and spent six months in jail following the arrest.

Despite going their separate ways, though, things weren't completely over for the couple. They went on to rekindle their romance in 2008, with Pam taking her two sons and moving back in with Tommy. They split again in 2010, calling it quits for good.

More recently, Pam split from husband Dan Hayhurst, whom she'd married in 2020, while Tommy wed former Vine star Brittany Furlan in 2019.

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