Former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith was born in November 1967 in a small town in Texas and went from rags to riches in her short and colorful life.
Anna, real name Vickie Lynn Hoganin, dropped out of school aged 15 to work in a fried chicken restaurant. She married a restaurant cook Billy Smith and gave birth to a boy named Daniel aged 17. She later dumped her husband and headed for Houston, Texas, where she got a job as an exotic dancer in a strip club. In 1989 she was arrested for drink driving in Houston.
It was while she was working in the club in 1991 that she met Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall and they soon started dating despite him being 89-years old and 63 years older than her.
READ MORE: Anna Nicole Smith’s life – ‘monster’ dad, secret lesbian wedding and unthinkable tragedy
Around the same time, blonde bombshell took nude snaps of herself and sent them to Playboy head honcho Hugh Hefner who was impressed by what he saw and she later featured in the famous magazine.
Howard bought Anna a house, horses, diamonds, a Rolls Royce, and other humungous presents and they married in 1994. According to New York magazine immediately after the wedding Anna left to go to Greece for a photoshoot and did not take her new husband along.
(Image: Sipa Press / Rex Features)
Howard reported sat crying in his wheelchair as she rushed away with her bodyguard Pierre DeJean who claims that they had sex that night in a hotel room.
At the time it was widely speculated that Anna was a ”gold digger” who married Howard for his money, claims she vehemently denied. The star made the transition from centrefold to the prestigious world of fashion and was was selected to be Guess Jean’s new face, replacing the brand’s previous ambassador, supermodel Claudia Schiffer.
Smith was named “Playmate of the Year” in 1993 and finally got to follow in her idol Monroe’s footsteps into the world of movies. She won a small role in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult and another minor part in The Hudsucker Proxy saw her co-starring with Paul Newman and Tim Robbins.
Thirteen months after their marriage, Marshall passed away in August 1995 aged 90, when the model was just 27. Anna claims her late husband, promised her half his estate which was worth $1.6bn (£1.2bn), but this was not mentioned in his will, nor had he set up a trust fund for Smith or her son Daniel’s benefit from.
Smith started dating photographer Larry Birkhead in secret and she announced she was pregnant with her second child in 2006.
(Image: Getty Images)
The baby girl was born in the Bahamas on September 7 2006 but the moment of joy was tainted by Daniel’s shock death. Smith’s son flew to the Bahamas to meet his baby sister but their reunion was brief.
On the morning of September 10, Smith woke up find Daniel dead in the chair in her hospital from an overdose. An autopsy revealed his cause of death to be related to methadone and two antidepressants.
Smith was devastated and shared her pain in an interview and revealed that she would rather have been the one to die. Five months after Daniel’s s death, Smith was found unresponsive in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida.
Attempts were made to revive her but Smith followed in the steps of her icon Marilyn Monroe and died alone of an overdose
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
