Actress Pamela Anderson has expressed her affection for Julian Assange. Picture: Robin Marchant/Getty Images for Cantor Fitzgerald

But the 49-year-old blonde bombshell — whose resumé includes 15 Playboy covers, Baywatch and a sex tape with Tommy Lee — has been happily content to be photographed (almost) fully clothed, as she delivers lunch, or dinner, or heaven knows what else to her latest bad-boy infatuation, The New York Post reports.

Anderson has been a fixture coming and going from Assange’s stronghold in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, silently carting trays of plastic-wrapped homemade vegan delicacies.

She has also been seen loaded down with Pret A Manger and Whole Foods bags filled with takeout meals for her numerous têtes-a-têtes with Assange, 45.

Actress Pamela Anderson is a big fan of Julian Assange. Picture: Paul Redmond/WireImageSource:Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Picture: AP Photo/Kirsty WigglesworthSource:AP

She has long pleaded for his freedom. In January, she sent a letter to then-President Barack Obama asking him to pardon Assange, while posting a picture of a ruffled Assange with a tiny kitten on his shoulder.

Anderson has been calculatingly coy about the nature of her visits with one of the most wanted men in the world, as if to stir the pot of media speculation.

Then, just last Thursday — the day she was photographed visiting him again with a camel coat draped around her shoulders and a short black sweater clinging to her curves — came another titbit for the press.

Anderson took to social media, penning an open letter titled “My Julian” that made her intentions more clear. She breathlessly declared Assange to be brave and upstanding. Oh, and sexy.

“My Julian is the most intelligent, interesting, and informed man in existence,” she wrote in a social-media post. “Yes, I think he’s quite sexy.”

She gushed that he intellectually stimulates her more than all her “ex-husbands and lovers combined.”

Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Julian Assange in London. Picture: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

The budding romance between Assange and Anderson could be one of the wackiest romantic couplings of all time. It could also be a mutually beneficial publicity ploy for two fading celebrities with spotlights to chase and axes to grind.

Anderson needs to raise cash for herself, and awareness for the many other charitable causes she’s taken on. And continued media attention is Assange’s only hope for a clemency and freedom from his embassy confines, since stepping outside now would lead to almost certain prosecution for sexual assault in Sweden.

“Pamela doesn’t do anything unless she is getting paid,” said a former associate, who did not want to be identified. “And a few years ago, she was pretty broke.”

Public records show that Anderson has spent the last few years paying off hundreds of thousands in tax liens. She now does her own hair and makeup, according to her site.

“I have only begun to attempt my own makeup for public appearances,” she wrote in a January 31 post on her site, titled “Paris,” adding that in the past 20 years her makeup was done by “professional artists.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s budding romance with Pamela Anderson has raised eyebrows. Picture: WikiLeaks via APSource:AP

Anderson’s special causes — in addition to Assange — have long included AIDS, the environment and animal rights.

Following in the stiletto-clad footsteps of Brigitte Bardot — the sexy French actress who campaigned for animal welfare — Anderson is the veteran of many outrageous publicity stunts.

In January, she sent First Lady Melania Trump a fake fur for the inauguration.

She has also taken off her clothes numerous times to draw attention to animal welfare, including a 2006 stunt in which she posed naked in the window of designer pal Stella McCartney’s London boutique.

Anderson and McCartney, a vegetarian who does not use animal-derived products in her designs, are very good friends, and Anderson often stays in London with McCartney or fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who introduced her to Assange.

Anderson, meanwhile, has had a tumultuous romantic life. She infamously married Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in 1995 after a whirlwind, four-day courtship. She was briefly married to Kid Rock.

Anderson sued one boyfriend, developer Laurence Hallier, over a Las Vegas luxury condo investment deal gone bad. She claimed that she was promised a penthouse in the luxurious Panorama Towers development in exchange for helping to promote the real-estate venture.

Hallier later sued Anderson, countering she had not fulfilled her end of the bargain.

Pamela Anderson was married to musician Kid Rock. Picture: SuppliedSource:News Limited

Her financial straits may have also had an impact on her own charitable giving.

Tax filings for her five-year-old non-profit, which proclaims to benefit “human, animal and environmental rights,” show she donated only $US14,000 ($18,500) in 2014 and $US6200 ($8216) in 2013.

Then there was ex-hubby Richard Salomon, a professional poker player and film producer who is listed as the president of an outfit called Suck It Productions.

Salomon donated $US237,000 ($314,000) to Anderson’s foundation in 2014 and $US100,000 ($132,500) the previous year, tax records show.

She actually married Salomon, her third husband, twice — in 2007 and again in 2014.

She told Ellen DeGeneres in 2013 that the two had remained “friends with benefits.”

The first marriage to Salomon was annulled after only 10 weeks. Their second marriage ended in 2015.

As she was going through her divorce, Anderson publicly revealed that she had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child and had also been molested and gang-raped as an adolescent.

“I did not have an easy childhood,” Anderson told an audience at an event to launch her non-profit, the Pamela Anderson Foundation, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. “I was molested from age six to 10 by my female babysitter.”

Pamela Anderson has two sons with ex-husband Tommy Lee. Picture: SuppliedSource:AFP

Pamela Anderson’s sex tape with Tommy Lee went viral. Picture: AP Photo/Kevork DjansezianSource:News Limited

But despite being a victim of sexual assault, Anderson vigorously defends Assange.

She is fully on board with his insistence that he did not sexually assault two women in Sweden on a lecture tour in August 2010. Assange has said the claims are “without basis.”

He fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London after the UK’s Supreme Court threatened to extradite him to Sweden to face questioning in 2012.

Anderson believes the allegations against Assange amount to little more than a political witch hunt.

“Julian has ruffled a few very powerful feathers,” Anderson wrote on her site.

“So, anytime anyone maliciously or frivolously mentions ‘rape’ next to his name — they need to understand it is defamation ... There is no rape ... This has been recklessly politicised.”

The “powerful feathers” are many.

Last week, Assange came under fire after WikiLeaks posted more than 8000 files of CIA secrets online.

He also hinted he had “a lot more” information about the CIA’s hacking tools that he would release soon.

Last year, during the presidential campaign, Assange’s organisation released internal emails from the Democratic Party that US intelligence agencies said were hacked by Russia to try to turn the election against Hillary Clinton.

While President Trump may have defended the leaking of the Democratic e-mails during the election campaign, his administration has vowed to vigorously prosecute the leaders in the latest WikiLeaks data dump.

Assange has been coy about the relationship with Anderson, although he has done little to deny rumours that they are an item

For his part, Assange has been coy about the relationship with Anderson, although he has done little to deny rumours that they are an item.

In a recent interview with an Australian radio reporter, he said, “She’s an attractive person with an attractive personality and whip-smart. She’s psychologically very savvy and over the last two years, she has done more to try and get this Australian — me — out of detention without charge.”

Further pressed on the details of their relationship, Assange continued, “I mean, I like her, she’s great, but I’m not going to go into private details.”

But as Anderson herself notes on her site, “There are no secrets anymore.”

“Our intentions were not to become romantic but to join forces,” she told a British reporter in February. “The rumours are flattering. I think I might have what it takes to be an effective first lady.”

She signs off on her letter to Assange by thanking her “heroes” at WikiLeaks.

“I will always stand by my Julian,” she writes. “Love, Pamela.”

Actress Pamela Anderson with her sons Brandon Thomas Lee (right) and Dylan Jagger Lee. Picture: Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

This story originally appeared in The New York Post and has been republished here with permission.