Miami / Los Angeles:

US model and reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith died on February 8 after being found unconscious in a Florida hotel room, police said.

The former Guess spokeswoman and Playboy Playmate, 39, was found unconscious in a room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Seminole police chief Charlie Tiger said.

He said Smith checked into the hotel on Monday, and was accompanied by her lawyer and companion Howard Stern. He said Smith’s nurse found her, a bodyguard performed CPR on her and she died at the medical centre.

“The cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner,” Tiger added.

It was a tragic end to one of US pop culture’s much-larger-than-life Cinderella stories.

Anna Nicole Smith will be remembered as the stripper who married an aged oil billionaire and became a pop-culture icon before her life collapsed under the weight of tragedy and legal woes.

The former Playboy model was once seen as one of the world’s most desirable women and appeared on the road to supermodel status when she replaced Claudia Schiffer as Guess Jeans model in 1990s. But the platinum-blonde facade crumbled over the course of the next decade as her life unravelled in the full glare of a voracious US tabloid media.

The mysterious sudden death of Smith’s son Daniel in the Bahamas days after the birth of her daughter last September, and her “commitment ceremony” days later with lawyer Stern enhanced her notoriety. Tabloid critics accused her of profiting from her son’s death to the tune of around $600,000 after she reportedly sold the last photos of her and her son together to media outlets.

Smith was also embroiled in twin legal actions — a paternity suit from photographer Larry Birkhead who claimed Smith’s daughter Dannielynn as his own, and a case over diet pills she endorsed.

Born in Houston, Texas, as Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, young Smith once said she grew up dreaming of being latter-day Marilyn Monroe. Like Monroe, she would eventually model for Playboy. Like Monroe, she would be dead before she was 40.

In her teens she worked as a waitress at a fast-food restaurant where she met and married her first husband Billy Smith in 1985 aged 17, giving birth to her son Daniel the same year. That marriage ended in divorce two years later, and she turned to work as a stripper in Houston.

It was during this period she met and formed a friendship with billionaire oil baron J Howard Marshall, a man 63 years her senior, in 1991. As her relationship with Marshall developed, so too did her modelling career. In March 1992 she graced the cover of Playboy for the first time, her bottle blonde hairstyle earning comparisons with her idol Monroe, and she posed nude for the magazine — just as Monroe had done — two months later. In 1993, she was named Playmate of the Year and secured a contract to model for Guess Jeans.

Then, on June 27, 1994, she married Marshall, appalling the tycoon’s family who would later paint her as a gold-digger.

Marshall’s death in August 1995 was the signal for a bitter decade-long legal battle between Smith and the mogul’s family, who sought to block her from claiming any of the estate.

Smith was awarded $88 million when the case went to court in 2002 but later saw that judgement reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeal in 2004. However, in 2005 the Supreme Court heard Smith’s appeal and ruled unanimously in May 2006 that she had the right to contest the judgement. At the time of her death Smith was still yet to be granted her share of the fortune and the legal fight was complicated when Marshall’s son, E Pierce Marshall, died suddenly in June last year.

Smith also landed small roles in spoof movies such as Naked Gun 33 1/3 and Illegal Aliens and also had a 2002 reality television series The Anna Nicole Show which was a ratings hit initially before it was cancelled in 2004.

She was a dear friend, says Hefner

LOS ANGELES: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner expressed his sadness on February 8 at the death of former model Anna Nicole Smith, who posed regularly for his magazine during the 1990s.

In a statement released by Playboy’s offices in Los Angeles, Hefner described Smith as a dear friend. “I am very saddened to learn about Anna Nicole’s passing,” Hefner said in a statement. “She was a dear friend who meant a great deal to the Playboy family and to me personally. My thoughts and prayers are with her friends and loved ones during this difficult time.” Playboy helped catapult Smith to fame after she appeared on the cover of the magazine for the first time in March 1992. She would go on to become a Playboy cover girl on four more occasions, most recently in February 2001. — AFP