USA/FILE: American actress/model Anna Nicole Smith dies aged 39

Record ID: 588707

  • Title: USA/FILE: American actress/model Anna Nicole Smith dies aged 39
  • Date: 15th February 2007
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE) (REUTERS) ANNA NICOLE SMITH ON THE RED CARPET AT VH1'S BIG IN '06
  • Embargoed: 2nd March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Entertainment,Obituaries
  • Reuters ID: LVA8S40U37BLOMKYXYQHWC4SHZ18
  • Story Text: The 39-year old American actress Anna Nicole Smith died after collapsing in her hotel room in Hollywood, Florida.
    Anna Nicole Smith, the small-town Texas girl turned Playboy Playmate who became a tabloid fixture while fighting all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court over the estate of her elderly billionaire husband, died in Florida on Thursday (February 08) at the age of 39.
    "At approximately 1:45 p.m. today the Seminole Police Department responded to the Hollywood Hard Rock Hotel in reference to a person needing medical assistance. The person later identified as Anna Nicole Smith was treated by paramedics and transported to the Hollywood Memorial Hospital. At 2:49 this afternoon we were advised by hospital personnel that Anna Nicole Smith had died," said Seminole Police Department chief Charlie Tiger.
    Smith, a statuesque blonde who also gained fame as an actress for Guess jeans, died at a local hospital shortly after she was reported needing medical help at her Florida hotel room by a private nurse, police said.
    Authorities said an autopsy would be conducted to determine the cause of death.
    The sudden death of Smith came just five months after Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, died in the Bahamas three days after the birth of her daughter.
    "At 1:45 all I know is that a bodyguard administered CPR to her," said chief Tiger.
    Smith was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood at 2:10 p.m. and died there, police said.
    Smith had been ordered to have her five-month-old baby girl undergo a paternity test as part of a lawsuit by an ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead.
    Birkhead sued Smith in October, demanding she have the paternity test because he believed he was the father of the girl.
    Smith had said her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, is the father of the baby.
    Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in the small Texas town of Mexia, 80 miles (130 km) south of Dallas.
    She grew up emulating screen legend Marilyn Monroe.
    She met elderly oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall while dancing at a Houston strip club and married him in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89.
    Marshall died the following year and Smith spent much of the following decade battling members of his family over his estate. In May 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Smith could pursue her case in federal court.
    Smith, who modelled Guess jeans, was named Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1993 and had film roles the following year in "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult."
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