Celebrity Debt

The country is still in a recession, but it isn't just the common folks who sometimes wind up searching for change under the couch cushions. Apparently Baywatch star Pamela Anderson has come to lean days --

Anderson Bankrupt?

(Though it was tempting, you'll notice I didn't say she had gone belly up, nor fallen upon hard times.)

I expect she'll bounce back. Especially if she fell, um, face down ...

(Aside: I happened to be in the right place at the right time to attend the world premiere of Barb Wire, the Anderson-starring movie. I was seated with a group of writers for Dark Horse, including the guy who wrote the comic book upon which the movie was based. There is a sequence in slo-mo during the opening credits -- might have been some water involved -- in which um -- ah, a less-than-fully-clad Anderson does a partial strip. As we were all watching, one of the women seated behind me leaned over to her husband and said, "They're not real, you know.")

As a sidebar to the entertainment story, there was a list of other notable celebrities who, at one time or another in their checkered careers, went bust. Some of those who hit the bankruptcy skids and filed the paperwork:

Kim Basinger
Larry King
Gary Coleman
Walt Disney
MC Hammer
Mike Tyson
Dorothy Hamill
Debbie Reynolds
Lorraine Bracco
Wayne Newton
Toni Braxton
Marvin Gaye
Willie Nelson
Donald Trump
Randy Quaid
Burt Reynolds
Mickey Rooney
Cyndi Lauper
Don Johnson
Francis Ford Coppola
Isaac Hayes
Ted Nugent
Tom Petty
Margot Kidder
Meat Loaf
Anna Nicole Smith
P.T. Barnum

Probably Mike Tyson and M.C. Hammer blew the most in the shortest amount of time, but I like it that P.T. Barnum found his way back (as did most of the others ...)