Like many a blonde bombshell before her, Anna Nicole Smith was blessed with fame and fortune, and eventually, beset by controversy. Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, she was raised in Mexia, Texas, where the natural blonde was considered a bit of a goody-two-shoes. At an undeveloped 5’11”, she stood out among her classmates for all the wrong reasons. “My mother was a career cop and pretty tough on me,” she admitted. “I’m such a soft touch and so trusting that people – not just men – tend to use me.” At seventeen, Vickie married her high-school sweetheart, and both took jobs at the local Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken. The brief union was unhappy, but it did produce a son, a bright spot in her young life. Working in Houston, she spotted an ad in the paper to audition for Playboy. The former Vickie Lynn settled on a stage name, and that was that – Anna Nicole Smith was ready for her close-up. “I stayed at the Playboy Mansion West, which was incredible,” said Anna in her original Playmate interview. “Tony Curtis was visiting the Hefners one evening, and he sketched a little picture of me.” Anna’s personality was nothing less than magnetic, and Playmate status gave her a national audience – before she knew it, she had been named Playmate of the Year 1993 and the face of Marciano’s Guess Jeans. Her older lover, oil baron J. Howard Marshall, proposed and they were married in 1994. With Marshall’s death one year later, Smith became embroiled in a feud over his estate that, fueled by tabloid speculation, went on for years. Following the death of her husband, Anna Nicole tried her hand as an actress, taking on the role of Tim Robbins’ girlfriend in The Hudsucker Proxy. Following in the footsteps of her idol, Marilyn Monroe, she was cast as the ditsy blonde, a role she was only too happy to reprise on the cover of Playboy’s February 2001 issue. After appearances in Naked Gun 33⅓ and a small part on Ally McBeal, Anna was given her own reality series, The Anna Nicole Show. With this glimpse into Anna’s beautiful but turbulent life, fans grew to love to hate her – despite the popularity of the show, it was eventually cancelled and she moved on to spokesmodeling gigs for Trimspa and PETA. During this time, Anna found herself both blessed and cursed: she gave birth to a daughter, Danielynn, and her beloved son, Daniel, passed away three days later. Sadly, Anna Nicole fell victim to addiction herself, and on February 8, 2007, she was found dead in her hotel room in Hollywood, Florida. Not unlike Marilyn Monroe, her death was seen as both inevitable and as having come too soon. In memoriam, photographer Arny Freytag said that he’d rejected Anna’s first Playmate test, while our photo editor, Marilyn Grabowski, insisted that she become a Playmate. “She was still Vickie then,” remembered Grabowski. “She felt a great affinity for Marilyn, the first Playboy Centerfold. While we were shooting, she would put on Marilyn’s music to get in the mood, and she’d sing along.” At the end of the day, Anna Nicole once said it best herself: “I grew up poor. There’s things I wanted to do and couldn’t. For me to come up and have all this fame and fortune, it’s just – it is a Cinderella story to me.” Forget glass slippers – Anna Nicole’s size 10 stilettos are some pretty big shoes to fill.