SHE made global headlines for marrying 89-year-old billionaire oil tycoon J Howard Marshall in 1994 and chasing his fortune through the courts after his death 13 months later.

But Anna Nicole Smith’s quest for fame and fortune led to addiction, the tragic death of her 20-year-old son just three days after the birth of her daughter – and ultimately her own fatal overdose at the age of 39.

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The model’s battle with drugs turned her into a “manipulative, egotistical monster” who uses Marshall “like an ATM” and invented an abusive childhood because “sad stories make money,” according to a new Netflix documentary.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me features interviews with her family, friends and employees, plus archival footage of her late mother Virgie.

Best friend Missy, who met Anna at the strip club where they both worked, claims the pair had a secret affair when they shared a large house that Marshall bought for the star.

“I was her first female lover,” she says. “I was really in love with her.”

But Missy says Anna’s pursuit of money and drugs has turned her into a “selfish” person with “no compassion”.

The film opens with footage of Anna saying: “I would advise people to follow their dreams. They can come true—I’m living proof.”

But the all-American rags-to-riches story that consumed the blonde bombshell also led to her rejecting her family, her friends and ultimately her life.

trembling with fear

Born Vickie Lynn Hogan in the small Bible Belt town of Mexia, Texas, she was raised by her police officer mother and stepfather.

She would later claim her mother was a tyrant, and she was subjected to “beatings, whippings and rape” throughout her childhood.

In archive material, Anna also reveals: “I wasn’t very popular in high school, although I was flat-chested. Now I have curves.”

But Uncle George Beal remembers practicing her cheerleader moves in the front yard of their modest home, “waving at the boys passing by and trying to get their attention”.

Mother Virgie adds: “She loved being the center of attention. We would go to the mall and there would be 50 men and boys walking behind us.”

At 17, she married local boy Billy Wayne Smith, 16, but she claimed he was “jealous” and locked her in their home while he went out to work.

She fled the marriage when son Daniel, born in 1986, was six months old, moved to Houston and auditioned at the strip club where Missy says millionaires would put hundreds of dollars in the girls’ thongs.

She recalled: “This beautiful girl was walking, and one of the girls said, ‘God, she looks beautiful, but they’re going to eat her alive.’

“Anna was very naive. They hired her, but she couldn’t dance. She was like an emu trying to fly.”

Missy has taken the newcomer under her wing, but says: “No one needed to give her any tips on how to attract a man. She knew what she was doing.

“She immediately made a lot of money.”

After Missy revealed her own abusive background, Anna claimed that Virgie would “handcuff her to the bed for days and beat her mercilessly”.

Missy adds: “She told me she was going to be a famous model. She was convinced that the only thing holding her back were her breasts.”

Anna—then calling herself Nicki—saved up and paid for a boob job.

But it left her in pain, and she took prescription drugs, including Valium.

It was in the strip club that the then 24-year-old first danced with widower and oil billionaire J Howard Marshall, then 86, in 1991.

He began showering her with expensive gifts—including a six-bedroom mansion with stables, a basketball court, swimming pool, and a guest house.

For two years he begged her to marry him, but she refused, saying she wanted to make a name for herself first to avoid “people calling me a gold digger”.

She finally found fame when Playboy picture editor Marilyn Grabowski invited her to do a photo shoot in LA.

But during the shoot, she found the model sitting in the corner, trembling with fear and wrapped in a sheet.

Anna, an obsessive Marilyn Monroe fan, brought along a record of Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.

Marilyn Grabowski says: “I put that music on and all of a sudden she changed. She was a different person.”

The cover shots and a spread as Playmate Of The Month led to a lucrative contract with Guess Jeans, where she was dubbed the new Claudia Schiffer.

She later insisted that she is not ashamed to pose naked, because Playboy “happened to make my dream come true”.

She changed her name to Anna Nicole and landed her first movie role, in the Coen brothers’ 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy, followed by Naked Gun 331⁄3 the same year.

As her career took off, Missy moved in to help look after Anna’s son Daniel—and they became lovers. Missy reveals: “She had an insatiable appetite for sex.”

Like her movie idol Marilyn, Anna was obsessed with the father she had never met, Eugene Hogan.

After using a private detective to track him down, she flew him and half-brother Donnie to LA and took them to the Playboy Mansion and Disneyland—but the reunion ended badly.

selfish monster

Donnie says: “I wanted her to know the truth. My father is a monster. When I was about 16, he told me he had raped his wife’s sister. She was a child.

Anna later told Missy that Eugene “tried to have sex with her”.

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With her drug use on the rise, Anna was rushed to hospital in October 1993, after collapsing from an accidental overdose.

Missy says: “She turns up to shoots looking hackneyed. She is no longer grateful to Mr. Marshall. She treats him like an ATM.

“You watch this person you love turn into this egotistical monster, a full-fledged drug addict. My friend who loved me was no longer there. There was no compassion. So I quit. We were done.”

Still in the grip of addiction, Anna married wheelchair-bound Howard in 1994, but lawyer Kelly Moore denies the busty pin-up was a gold digger.

She says: “They were both extraordinary people who other people always tried to take pieces of.

“Howard and Anna were protection for each other.”

But in a recording of one of Howard’s desperate calls, he begs her to call him, saying: “I love you. I’m trying to find you.”

When she finally picks up, sounding groggy, she tells him to talk to her tomorrow as “I won’t remember tonight”.

After just 13 months of marriage, 90-year-old Howard died, prompting 28-year-old Anna to claim he had promised her half of his £1.3 billion fortune.

The death sparked a bitter legal battle with Howard’s son Pierce, as a court heard she disposed of at least £10m of Howard’s cash.

As Anna explained: “It’s very expensive to be me.”

During the case – which she lost – she began an affair with attorney Howard K Stern, whom Kelly Moore described as “a low-level lawyer looking for a big payday.”

Judging penniless, Anna signed up for a reality TV show for E!, The Anna Nicole Smith Show.

She also developed an eating disorder, which ballooned to 21st, and signed a deal with diet firm Trimspa, often going days without eating and living on diet pills and drugs.

But bodyguard Maurice Brighthaupt, known as Big Moe, says she milked her drug-addled persona when it suited her, citing an infamous appearance at the American Music Awards in 2004, when she blacked out her intro to Kanye West.

He revealed: “She said, ‘I’m going to do something that everyone will always remember.’

“Then she got up on stage and looked tall, but Anna knew how to work the crowd. Off camera she was totally with it.”

Missy remembers hearing an interview where Anna claimed she ran away from home after being repeatedly raped and beaten.

She says: “I was shocked because I knew it wasn’t her childhood. It was my childhood—exactly as I passed it on to her.”

Bizarre paternity battle

Brother Donald says their mother Virgie was a “sweet, loving person” who never abused his sister.

In archive material, Virgie says: “I once asked her: ‘Why do you tell such lies?’

“She said, ‘I wish you could understand that I make more money telling sad stories than I do telling good stories.’

There was more controversy when Anna became pregnant in 2005, sparking a bizarre paternity battle between four men. as well as

Howard, former bodyguard Alexander Denk claimed to be the father, and in a strange twist, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, said he had a decade-long affair with her.

Photographer Larry Birkhead was later proven to be the father of Dannielynn, now 16, and was given custody.

By then, son Daniel, who had had a breakdown, was slipping into drug addiction.

The day after Anna gave birth to Dannielynn, the 20-year-old visited his mother and baby sister in a Barbadian hospital and, while there, died of an overdose.

Anna turned to drugs again and became suicidal.

Five months after Daniel died, he was found dead in a hotel room from an accidental overdose of nine different drugs.

It was a tragic ending that mirrored the death of her idol Marilyn – and one she herself predicted.

“She kept telling me she was going to die young,” says Missy.

“I should have believed it.”

• Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me is on Netflix starting tomorrow.

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