Anna Nicole Smith
Birth name: Vickie Lynn Hogan
Born: Nov. 28, 1967 in Houston, Texas
Died: Feb. 8, 2007 in Hollywood, Fla.
Cause of death: Drug Overdose

Like a classic pin-up siren from the fifties, Anna Nicole Smith knew how to use her God-given (and doctor enhanced) curves for full effect.  With a mega-watt smile and even larger breasts, Anna Nicole made the leap from Playboy cover to 1993 Playboy Playmate of the Year, back when that title meant something to many. But when she replaced Claudia Schiffer as lead model for Guess Jeans, she rocketed to international stardom. She soon started racking up magazine covers, with Vanity Fair, Vogue, W, and Harper’s Bazaar joining “lad-mags” like FHM in promoting her. Soon, however, it seemed the only people who liked her more than photographers were attorneys, as she became involved in too many court actions to count. But two of them led to the U.S. Supreme Court, as her scandalous marriage to 89-year-old oilman J. Howard Marshall kept attorneys busy for more than a decade, especially after Marshall died and his brother fought to keep Anna Nicole from any inheritance. Basically, he won. But loss was nothing new to the fading beauty, whose drug addiction increased after the death of her son, 20-year-old Daniel Smith, who died while visiting his mother’s hospital room, apparently due to a lethal combination of drugs. Sadly, Anna Nicole followed the same path, as she was found five months later dead in a hotel room at Hollywood, Florida’s Hard Rock Casino. But her death only led to more court cases, as photographer Larry Birkhead fought successfully to prove he, and not Anna Nicole’s manager, Howard K. Stern, was the father of her only daughter, Dannielynn.