Anna Nicole Smith’s Sweet Daughter Dannielynn Is Growing Up Nowadays

Jun 15, 2021 by apost team

Anna Nicole Smith is an American actress, model, and television personality who first rose to fame for modeling in Playboy Magazine and winning playmate of the year in 1993. She is most remembered for her highly publicized legal battle over the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall, and for her tragic passing in February 2007.

Smith was actually born Vickie Lynn Hogan and changed her name to Anna Nicole as a stage name when she started to become a successful model. The last name Smith was her married name from her first marriage to her husband, Billy Smith. The model had many relationships that were covered extensively by the media, and she became rather infamous over time. 

Smith's biggest controversy was the accusation that she had only married her late husband, Marshall, for his money. This resulted in a huge legal dispute between her and Marshall's family over who should inherit his vast fortune after his death. Smith claimed that Marshall had promised her half of his estate but that his family interfered, so the will was never changed. 

The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States who ruled in Smith's favor. However, another suit was filed and then brought before the Supreme Court once more, and this time Smith's case was lost. 

Another case that brought more publicity to Smith and her family was the paternity case of her daughter, Dannielynn Birkhead, who was only five months old when Smith passed. Dannielynn is 17 now and has a life of her own. Read on to learn more about Smith's life and to see her and her daughter's striking resemblance.

Smith was born in Houston, Texas on November 28, 1967. She was the only child of Donald Eugene Hogan and Virgie Mae Tabers, though she had five half-siblings from her father's side. The model was raised by her mother and aunt primarily. She moved to Mexia, Texas, to live with her maternal aunt when she was in ninth grade.

Life in Mexia was hard for Smith. She did not do well in high school and dropped out before her sophomore year. "I remember when I dated Anna Nicole and she'd always talk about Mexia, Texas. She always wanted to get out of there," said Larry Birkhead to ABC News about the mother of his daughter. 

The ABC News team also had the chance to speak with Smith's childhood best friend, Jo McLemore. "When she went to school here, in Mexia, she was miserable. She was having a hard time with being bullied. At that point, I think, after all she'd been through ... just all the struggles in her life, she was finally fed up," McLemore said about Smith's decision to leave school.

McLemore also shared that she and Smith used to just hang out by the side of the road in town when they were younger. She added with a laugh, "There was nothing else to do here. There's no movie theaters. I mean there wasn't Starbucks or anything. Basically the main place to eat was Krispy's." Krispy's was the only restaurant in town, officially named Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken. This is where Smith went to work after leaving school.

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While Smith was working at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken, she met fry cook Billy Smith, who she would marry in 1985 when she was only 17. McLemore shared in the same interview, "Billy was also a high school dropout," she said. "They were so young. He was 16. She was 17. She had her first child, Daniel, at 18." Daniel Wayne Smith was born in January of 1986. 

According to ABC News, by the time Smith was 19, her son's father was out of the picture, and she was raising him on her own. This pushed her to try and make more money, but without a degree and little job experience, she didn't have many options. Smith decided to become a dancer at a strip club to earn money for her family.

Career

While she was working as a dancer, a friend of Smith's submitted photos of her to Playboy magazine, and shortly after, she was hired to model for the publication. She was featured on the cover in March 1992 when she was still going by the name Vickie Lynn Smith. She then went on to change her stage name to Anna Nicole Smith as a way to keep her professional persona separate. 

One of Smith's other close friends, Frankie Rodriguez, opened up to ABC News about the model after her passing. He explained that Smith acted as if she was two separate people. Rodriguez said, "There was Vickie Lynn and Anna Nicole Smith. Any kinda camera, you just yelled out her name, 'Anna Nicole.' When she turned around, it was on the spot; you saw Anna Nicole."

Rodriguez elaborated, "The minute that camera left, it was a whole other person. She was back to Vickie Lynn," he said. "I (am) very fortunate to have met and gotten to know Vickie Lynn… How she did it, I don't know. But whatever she was doing, it was making everybody watch." All of Smith's friends speak very highly of her and make it seem like she was just an ordinary girl despite her extraordinary life.

Even though she seemed quiet and shy half of the time, it was Smith's outgoing and bubbly persona that made her such a successful model. After her Playboy debut, Smith went on to model for Guess, H&M, Marie Claire, and GQ magazine. The photographers at Guess jeans noticed that she bore a close resemblance to actress Jayne Mansfield and organized Mansfield-inspired photoshoots to show off her beauty.

While she found plenty of success as a model, Smith's acting career did not take off in the same way. In 1994 she was featured in the comedy film "The Hudsucker Proxy" as well as "Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult." The films were released a week apart and earned Smith favorable publicity but did not launch a successful acting career.

In the early 2000s, Smith had her own reality show called "The Anna Nicole Show," which aired on the E! Network. The series showed Smith going about her daily life alongside her son Daniel Wayne and her boyfriend and attorney, Howard K. Stern. The show achieved the highest cable ratings for a reality show in 2002.

Before her passing, Smith gave an interview on the ABC series "20/20," where she spoke candidly about her love and relationship with Marshall. She said that when she met the man, "He had no will to live and I went over to see him. He got a little twinkle in his eyes and he asked me to dance for him, and I did." She said Marshall was "really, really funny" and "brilliant." Smith added, "Gosh, he had so many stories. He was just an amazing man. He was just really amazing."

According to ABC News, Smith and Marshall met when she was still a dancer at a strip club. It was after the passing of his late wife and his ex-lover, another exotic dancer. The two entered into a love affair but did not get married right away. Marshall lavished Smith with expensive gifts to try and woo her, but she held firm that she wanted to wait until she had reached success on her own. 

Smith told "20/20" in 2000, "After my husband passed, it was really, really hard on me. He knew me when I was nobody and that's what people don't understand, and I don't wanna be called a gold digger because I'm not. I could've married him a week after we met, or two weeks after we met. I could've married him years before, and I didn't. I didn't. I went out and I made something of myself." The model did just that by reaching worldwide fame in 1993 as playmate of the year.

The couple was married in Houston, Texas, in June 1994 when Marshall was 89 years old. Despite the rumors about her motives, Smith always maintained that she was deeply in love with the man. "She would call him her sugar booger and sweetheart and all that," McLemore said to ABC News. "They needed each other, in more of a sense than people understood, and so, they just took care of each other."

Marshall passed away in August of 1995 at the age of 90. Smith was devastated and broke down crying when she heard the news. One of Smith's close friends said in the same interview, "It was never about the money, and she loved this man. She would sit close to him with her legs on the couch over him. And he would laugh and they were as happy and communicative with each other as two people could be."

Death and Birth

Unfortunately, after the loss of her husband and the giant legal battle that ensued, Smith would go on to face even more tragedy. Just five days after the birth of her daughter, Dannielynn, Smith's son Daniel passed away from a drug overdose. Daniel went to visit his mother and new baby sister in the hospital and fell asleep next to his mother in her bed, but never woke up. He was 20, and his death was ruled an accident, and no charges were filed. 

All of this occurred in New Providence, The Bahamas, where Smith had moved late in her pregnancy. It is speculated that she moved to the Bahamas to avoid a mandatory paternity test for Dannielynn, as there was controversy over who her birth father was. 

Stern was the one to originally state that he was the baby's father, but photographer Larry Birkhead claimed it had to be him due to the timing of his relationship with Smith. ABC News reported that others speculated the child's father could have been Smith's bodyguard and chef, Alexander Denk.

Smith passed away from a drug overdose less than a year after the passing of her son and only five months after Dannielynn was born. Birkhead filed a lawsuit to establish that he was the birth father, and a US judge ordered that a DNA test must be performed. Birkhead's attorney requested a DNA sample be taken from Smith's body, but the request was denied.  

In April 2007, two months after Smith's death, Birkhead was determined Dannielynn's father by the Bahamian court system. Stern did not take any further action, and Dannielynn has grown up in Louisville, Kentucky, with Birkhead ever since. 

Dannielynn Today

Now, Dannielynn is 17 and almost all grown up. She is interested in acting, like her mother, and has been studying theater in school. Her father shared with Daily Mail TV's Jesse Palmer in an interview, "I got an email from her teacher (that) said, 'Dannielynn gave one of the most believable performances of the whole entire school that was in the play.'"

Acting has become a passion for the young girl. In the same interview, Dannielynn said, "It's really cool to like, act as a character and not yourself, It's like portraying a new person. It's fun." She is showing talent at a young age, like her mother. 

Palmer gave an interview to Entertainment Tonight about his chat with the Birkhead's. "We catch up with (Dannielynn), her life, what her hobbies are, what it's like growing up a daughter of a big celebrity. Her dad is raising her in Kentucky, trying to give her this normal life away from the spotlight," Palmer said.

He added, "She's now a teenager. She really is a spitting image of her mom. It'll be interesting to see what happens for her… We catch up with her, her life, what her hobbies are, what it's like growing up a daughter of a big celebrity. Her dad is raising her in Kentucky, trying to give her this normal life away from the spotlight. So it's a great catch up."

Dannielynn's father does a great job of keeping Smith's memory alive for their daughter. Palmer said, "There are some tokens throughout the house in her memory and in her honor. He talks with his daughter a lot about who her mom was (and) what she did. And I think (he's) trying to help his daughter understand who her mother was in his memory of her."

Dannielynn has gotten to grow up away from the public eye, which was good after her time in the tabloids as a baby. Now, that baby is all grown up and living her life as best as she can. Hopefully, moving forward, she will keep gaining positive attention for her talent as an actress and for being a wonderful young lady. Dannielynn looks so much like her mother, but we hope she doesn't have the same struggles and can live a long, happy life. 

What do you think of Dannielynn's recent photos? Does she resemble her mother? Let us know your opinion, and be sure to pass this story on to your friends and family.