Smith: Sad end to a troubled life

The small print in this Trimspa ad says "Be Envied"

By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY

She came from nothing, but she lived bigger than most.

A small-town girl who was determined to make something of herself, Anna Nicole Smith had the quintessential train-wreck life: intriguing, eye-popping, tragic.

The high school dropout-turned-dazzler, who died Thursday at 39 in a hospital in Hollywood, Fla., was fascinating to celebrity watchers — not because she was an A-list star but because she was an unpredictable blond bombshell who was always in the middle of controversy.

She married a billionaire 60 years her senior and then battled his heirs over the estate, ending with a victory at the Supreme Court.

The world watched as she battled her weight, gaining, losing, then gaining again.

She became a TV star, riding the reality show mania, in a series that offered a candid look at how a celebrity lived.

In a span of days, she gave birth to a daughter, and her 20-year-old son was found dead in her recovery room. Now Dannielynn, 5 months, is without a mother, and her father's identity is uncertain.

Smith's former lawyer Lenard Leeds told TMZ.com it's no secret that Smith "had a very troubled life" and added that she had "so many, many problems."

Still, she flirted and laughed her way through life.

"She was light and fluffy," Tom O'Neill of In Touch Weekly said on CNN late Thursday.

Said Rob Chilton, features director of OK! magazine: "She was a great pop icon, almost like a cartoon character."

Shots of her on red carpets vamping like her childhood idol Marilyn Monroe ran on cable news channels for hours after the news broke Thursday, proof that Smith had achieved her goal of finding a place in the spotlight.

Smith made everyone laugh along with her — and at her — until it just wasn't funny anymore.

At 17, she met Billy Smith, a co-worker at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken, and they had baby Daniel. Two years later, they divorced. She began working at topless bars in Houston to pay the bills.

Her nickname was "Sweet Cheeks." Though her body was voluptuous, her breasts weren't, and she was allowed to work only the afternoon shift.

Still, she believed she was destined for greater things.

The first order of business: breast implants. In 1991, at 24, she entered a Playboy contest and won. In 1992, she listed her "turn-ons" as "Men who wear braces, cowboys! I also get off on scary movies." In 1993, she was Playmate of the Year. (Founder Hugh Hefner issued a statement Thursday saying he was "saddened" by the news of Smith's death.)

After that, she was offered a modeling job for Guess? jeans.



"I didn't know what Guess? jeans were," she told People magazine in an interview at the time. "I just shopped at Wal-Mart and Kmart and stuff like that."

In 1994 she made her big-screen debut in Naked Gun 331/3: The Final Insult.

Anyone who didn't happen to see that movie had probably heard of her anyway: It was the same time she married oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, who was in a wheelchair and more than 60 years her senior. They had met years earlier when she was an exotic dancer.

Though branded a gold digger, she seemed to have found happiness with her husband.

When she was defending her marriage to Marshall, she told In Touch: "Nobody has ever respected me or done things for me. So when Howard came along, it was a blessing."

But the blessing was short-lived. His death less than two years later, in 1995, left behind a fortune estimated at $1.6 billion. She was still fighting for a share of the money when she died.

Smith battled her weight and struggled with other addictions. She acknowledged that she had a problem with prescription drugs.

Her wild behavior was on display on The Anna Nicole Show, her often-bawdy reality series that aired on E! from 2002 to 2003. But it also showed her softer side.

Children and dogs — she had a toy poodle named Sugar Pie — were her true loves. Her son, Daniel, whom she raised as a single mother, was often by her side.

"I don't have any good memories from Christmas when I was a girl," Smith told People in 2004. "So I tried to make them special for Daniel. We never missed a trip to the mall to see Santa to take pictures."

Gabriel Rotello, who directed a 2003 Showtime documentary about Smith, said in People: "Even her most vehement detractors reluctantly admitted that she was a good mother. Daniel was just a really well-adjusted, smart kid."

She was devastated by his death Sept. 10. The cause, as determined by a medical examiner, was an accidental interaction of methadone and two antidepressants.

Last November in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Smith said: "I'll never accept that (Daniel is) gone. I don't understand why God took him and didn't take me."

Since then, Smith's troubles seemed to double.

She was hospitalized for pneumonia for a week in November. She was sued, along with diet-supplement company TrimSpa — for which she has been a spokeswoman and a model client — in a class-action lawsuit that claimed the company's marketing of a weight-loss pill was false or misleading.

Dannielynn is the subject of a DNA test battle with Smith's former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, who says he is the father of the child. Smith's longtime friend and lawyer, Howard K. Stern — with whom Smith shared a commitment ceremony on Sept. 28 in the Bahamas — also says he is the girl's father.

Considering her difficult life — and especially her recent past — few were surprised at Thursday's news.

"I am very, very sad, but I am not shocked," Smith's former publicist, David Granoff, told MSNBC. He had seen Smith on television Wednesday, "and she had no spark any more."

But Smith's star tale is far from over.

"This is a massive story," OK! magazine's Chilton says. "We'll now see all the stories about how she died and loads of conspiracy stories and loads of rumors about was it drink or drugs?"

And, he says, her memory will be that of someone who was a larger-than-life celebrity.

"She really was a celebrity. That sums her up perfectly. She had loads of charisma, and she was always doing something crazy. There was always an Anna Nicole Smith story floating around."

Contributing: Karen Thomas

Posted 2/8/2007 4:10 PM ET
Updated 2/9/2007 7:37 AM ET