Anna Nicole Smith was an American model, actress, and TV personality who was one of the most controversial and most talked about celebrities in the 1990s.
After posing for Playboy in May 1992, she rose to prominence and earned the title Playmate of the Year in 1993. She also modeled for fashion brands like H&M, Guess, Lane Bryant, and Heatherette.
She was born as Vickie Lynn Hogan in November 1967 and worked at Red Lobster, Wal-Mart, and fried chicken restaurant in her early teens. Later she joined a club in Houston and began stripping.
While she was still working at the fried chicken restaurant, Anna fell in love with Billy Wayne Smith, a cook at the restaurant, and married him in April 1985. She was only 16 then, and Billy was 17 years old. She gave birth to their son, Daniel Wayne Smith, a year later.
Anna and Billy split in 1987, and their divorce was finalized in 1993.
While she was working as a stripper in the Houston club, Nicole met J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon who, fell for her and helped her become a Playboy model. The couple tied the knot in 1994. At the time of their wedding, Howard was 89 years old.
“I loved him for so much for what he did for me and my son,” Anna told Larry King on his show in 2002. “I’ve never had love like that before. No one has ever loved me, and done things for me, and respected me and didn’t care about what people said about me.”
Although it was speculated that the model married Marshall for money, the business tycoon didn’t name her in his will when he died, and she filed a case in court to get her share in his multimillion-dollar estate. According to Smith, Howard verbally promised her half of his estate. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court in 2006.
Meanwhile, Nicole made a name for herself in her modeling career and became so successful that newspapers and tabloids couldn’t get enough of her.
“I love the paparazzi. They take pictures, and I just smile away. I’ve always liked the attention. I didn’t get very much growing up, and I always wanted to be, you know, noticed,” she once told the Washington Post.
Sadly, she couldn’t live long enough and died at 39 – in 2007, Anna Nicole Smith passed away due to a drug overdose. A few months before her tragic death, she gave birth to her daughter Dannielynn. Days after her daughter was born, Anna lost her first-born son, Daniel, in September 2006.
According to The Mirror, “Daniel died while he visited his mum and newborn baby sister, with an autopsy finding that he died from an accidental drug overdose.”
As for her daughter, Dannielynn, her identity was also met with drama – her birth certificate stated Howard Marshall as her father; however, later, a DNA test proved that one of Nicole’s boyfriends, Larry Birkhead, a photographer was her biological father.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I told you so. I’m the father. My baby’s going to be coming home pretty soon,” Birkinstold the media reporters in 2007.
Larry gained custody and raised his daughter in Kentucky, away from all the media outlets and limelight. However, Dannielynn began modeling in 2013 when she was only six years old.
“It’s really cool to like, act as a character and not yourself. It’s like portraying a new person. It’s fun,” she said in an interview with ET.
Today Dannielynn Birkhead is 16 years old and is the spitting image of her mum, Anna Nicole Smith.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: The Mirror
