Hollywood: Anna Nicole Smith, the small-town Texas girl turned voluptuous tabloid fixture who fought all the way to the US Supreme Court over her billionaire husband's estate, died suddenly at the age of 39.
Smith, a platinum blonde who grew up idolising screen legend Marilyn Monroe and gained fame as a model for Guess? jeans and Playboy, was pronounced dead at a Hollywood, Florida hospital at around 1945 hrs GMT on Thursday.
She had been rushed to the hospital after a private nurse -- who had apparently been alone with Smith in her room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino -- telephoned a hotel operator to ask for medical assistance.
Police said the cause of death was unknown and scheduled an autopsy for Friday.
Smith's death came at a time of grief and fresh legal wrangles that had been avidly followed by the tabloid newspapers.
Just five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, died in the Bahamas three days after the birth of her daughter.
She then became the center of a paternity suit over the baby girl. "I can confirm that she is deceased. It's as shocking to me as to you guys," Smith's attorney, Ronald Rale, said. "I don't know anything further. (Her lawyer and husband) Howard (K. Stern) obviously is speechless and grieving."
Hotel president Michael Brown said paramedics found Smith unconscious in her hotel room and tried to revive her but found her unresponsive.
Smith had been ordered to have her five-month-old daughter undergo a paternity test as part of a lawsuit by an ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead.
On Wednesday, a Los Angeles judge set a Feb. 21 deadline for Smith to complete the test. Birkhead sued Smith in October, demanding she have the paternity test because he believed he was the girl's father. Smith had said Stern is the father of the baby.
Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan and raised in the small Texas town of Mexia, about 130 km south of Dallas, by her mother and aunt. A high school dropout, Smith met her first husband, Billy Smith, at the age of 17 but later split from him and moved to Houston, where she became a stripper.
It was there that she met elderly oil billionaire J Howard Marshall. The unlikely couple married in 1994, when she was 26 and he was 89.
Marshall died the following year and Smith spent much of the following decade battling his family over his estate.
In May 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled that Smith could pursue her case in federal court. Smith, who modeled Guess? jeans, was named Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1993 and had film roles that year in The Hudsucker Proxy and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.
"I am very saddened to learn about Anna Nicole's passing," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said in a written 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."
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