Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson will grace the cover and centrefold of Playboy magazine's final nude issue.

Anderson, 48, revealed she had been asked to pose nude for the publication in an interview with celebrity news show Entertainment Tonight.

Playboy announced in October it was ending a more than 60-year tradition of publishing nude images of women, saying the practice had become "passe" due to the availability of free images online.

No other celebrity has graced the Playboy cover more than Anderson, who was first photographed for the magazine in 1989.

The January/February 2016 issue, due out on 11 December, will be Anderson's 13th time on the cover.

"I got a call from (Hugh Hefner's) attorney who said, 'We don't want anybody else. There's nobody else, could you do the last cover of Playboy'?" she told ET.

Anderson added that she had to ask permission from her two teenage sons before agreeing to pose nude one last time.

She said the boys - now 19 and 17 - "were teased, and made fun of, and had a few fist fights over their mom" when they were growing up.

This time, however, they were very supportive, Anderson said.

"He was so excited," she said of her 19-year-old son, Brandon. "He may have high-fived me!"

Anderson told ET she made the most of the nude photo-shoot, which took place at various locations around the Playboy Mansion property.

She said: "I took off all my clothes, and I rolled down the hill as fast as I can."

Playboy's circulation has dropped from about 5.6 million in 1975 to around 800,000 in recent years.

The American edition, which has featured the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, now operates at a loss - although global copies still bring in a profit.

(Sky News)