Anna Nicole Smith Biography

Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, Smith was a young child when her parents moved from Houston to Mexia, south of Dallas. Soon after, her father left the family and her mother and aunt raised her. She has a half sister, Donna Hogan and was always drawn to the idea of being a star, her role model being Marilyn Monroe.

During her teens, Smith worked in a local fried chicken restaurant where she met Billy Smith. He was a cook at the restaurant and a year younger than Smith. They were married on 4 April 1985 when he was 16 and she was 17. In 1986, their son Daniel Wayne Smith was born but unfortunately she and Billy were divorced a year later, in 1987.

A single mother at age 20, Smith took on a number of low-paying jobs before moving into more lucrative work as an exotic dancer. She danced at a nightclub in Houston under various assumed names and also began modelling. Her first big photo shoot was at age 24, for Playboy magazine, when she posed in a low-cut evening gown on the cover of their March 1992 issue. Guess? Jeans designer, Paul Marciano, saw Smith in Playboy, was intrigued by her look and replacing Claudia Schiffer, made her the Guess? Jeans model.

The black and white photographs of Smith for the Guess? advertising campaign were reminiscent of sex symbol Jayne Mansfield. This was all playing into Smith’s dream of being like Marilyn Monroe, an image that she encouraged with tousled blonde hair, pouty red lips and the signature white dress. In fact, the press called her ‘the next Marilyn Monroe'. Smith then posed nude, under a given name, for the centrefold of the May 1992 Playboy issue. In 1993, she was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, at which point she had finally decided to work under the name of Anna Nicole Smith. That year she also appeared in a promotional video for Bryan Ferry’s single ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ (1993).

Finally getting a taste of the celebrity status she had craved, Smith decided it was time to turn her hand to acting. She was cast as Za-Za, a small role in Ethan and Joel Coen’s ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ (1994) starring Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman. She then played a more substantial role as Tanya Peters in ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult’ (1994), an action comedy starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley and George Kennedy. Smith subsequently featured in a 1994 advertising campaign for Swedish fashion company H&M and starred as Colette Dubois/Vickie Linn with Joey Travolta in the action thriller ‘To the Limit’ (1995).

Oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II had always been a frequent visitor to the club in Houston where Smith danced topless. They had met in 1991 and despite the age difference of 63 years, were married on 27 June 1994. Smith was 26 and Marshall was 89, which caused much gossip in the tabloids about her merely being a ‘gold digger’. She did use his money to treat herself to the extravagant, celebrity lifestyle she had always wanted, starting with a breast enlargement.

Smith hired publicists and photographers, bodyguards and talent agents, attorneys and other support staff. She lavished money on expensive clothes, make-up stylists and frequent trips to the hairdresser. Smith always maintained she loved her husband and that age did not matter to her. However, during her marriage, she was romantically linked to a number of men, including Scott Baio, bodybuilder Clay Spires, John Travolta’s nephew Rikki and real estate tycoon, Johnathan McManus. It was alleged that she never lived with her husband, never visited him in hospital when he was terminally ill and was not with him when he died on 4 August 1995.

Seemingly beset by misfortune, Smith filed for bankruptcy in 1996 when a former female assistant sued her for $850,000 on sexual harassment charges. In 1997 she recorded a cover version of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, made famous by Marilyn Monroe. It was released in France with a promotional video featuring Smith and was a minor club hit.

The drawn out and convoluted court case of Marshall v. Marshall began in November 1999. Joined by his disowned younger brother, James Howard Marshall III, Smith went to court to fight E. Pierce Marshall, her former stepson, for half of her late husband’s estate, worth $1.6 billion. J. Howard Marshall II’s contested will had been drawn up soon after his marriage to Smith and neither she nor his younger son were mentioned in it. Smith claimed however that her husband had verbally promised her half of his fortune if she married him.

In September 2000, Smith was awarded close to $450 million from the estate but after an appeal, it was vacated in July 2001 by a Houston judge. She was ordered to pay over $1 million to E. Pierce Marshall in legal fees and expenses. Then in March 2002, she was awarded $88 million but in December 2004, this decision was reversed by a panel of three judges, on the basis that Smith was not one of Marshall’s heirs. In September 2005 the Marshall v. Marshall case reached the US Supreme Court and on 1 May 2006 Smith won the chance to pursue her claims in a federal court. At the age of 67, E. Pierce Marshall died after an infection on 20 June 2006. Elaine Tettemer Marshall, his widow representing his estate, continued to oppose Smith in the ongoing Marshall v. Marshall case.

Smith’s acting career and her public image suffered due to the lengthy legal wrangle, as well as her steadily increasing weight and her reportedly bizarre behaviour, which was often featured in the tabloids. She reached her peak weight of 224 lb in 1996 but managed to diet down to 138 lb in 1997. During this time, she was cast in the low-budget ‘Skyscraper’ (1997) and appeared in television episodes of ‘Sin City Spectacular’ (1998), ‘Veronica’s Closet’ (1999), ‘Ally McBeal’ (1999) and ‘N.Y.U.K.’ (2000).

Once again ballooning, Smith was close to her peak weight when in August 2002, ‘The Anna Nicole Show’, an E! Cable television reality show about her daily life, made its debut. It was cancelled in February 2004, reportedly due to creative differences. Following that, Smith appeared as herself in ‘Wasabi Tuna’ (2003), an action comedy directed by Lee Friedlander. Having worked hard at dieting, she returned to modelling in October 2003 and became a celebrity spokesperson for TrimSpa, having lost 69 lb (31 kg) using their diet pills.

By 2005, she had slimmed down to her 1990s modelling weight of 140lbs and represented a weight-loss programme from Russel Simmons. Next was another spot of acting, this time in a cameo role as herself, in the comedy/crime film ‘Be Cool’ (2005) which starred John Travolta as Chilli Palmer and Uma Thurman as Edie Athens. Smith then starred as Lucy in sci-fi comedy, ‘Illegal Aliens’ (2006).

Following the announcement on her website in June 2006 that she was five months pregnant, Smith gave birth to her daughter on 7 September 2006 in the Bahamas. A certain amount of secrecy currently surrounds her baby, as Smith refuses to name the father and will not confirm her daughter’s name. Two men are claiming paternity: Smith’s ex-boyfriend, photojournalist Larry Birkhead, and her attorney, Howard K. Stern. It is rumoured that she will name her daughter either Hannah or Dannie Lynn Smith.

In a tragic twist of fate, on 10 September 2006, whilst visiting his mother and her new baby in hospital, Smith’s beloved 20-year-old son Daniel collapsed and died. Finding no signs of injury or physical violence, the autopsy ruled out several natural causes of death, as well as suicidal overdose and foul play. It was discovered that there was a third person in the room at the time of Daniel’s death and he has been identified as attorney, Stern.

Smith hired a forensic pathologist to undertake a second autopsy on her son, which produced the same conclusions as before. The possibility remains for criminal charges to be filed. Whilst results from the second toxicology report showed that methadone (used to treat heroin addiction), as well as Zoloft and Lexapro (two antidepressant medications) were in Daniel’s system when he died, the autopsy and toxicology reports will not be made public until an inquest is held. Bahaman authorities issued a death certificate for Daniel Smith on 20 September 2006, with the cause of death listed as “pending chemical analysis”.

Within five months of her son's death tragedy stuck again. On 8 February 2007, Anna Nicole Smith was found unconscious in a hotel room near Miami. All efforts to resuscitate her failed and the 39-year-old model was pronounced dead. As yet, no cause of death has been announced.