Anna Nicole Smith lived her life always on the brink of the American Dream.

The former stripper with a pneumatic bust burst into public view when she featured on the cover of Playboy magazine and was named its 1993 Playmate of the Year. She became a famous model for Guess jeans, her rumpled platinum hair giving her the look of a latterday Marilyn Monroe.

Ms Smith married a Texas multimillionaire who was 63 years her senior. After his death and a Supreme Court judgment she stood to inherit part of his fortune.

Ms Smith even starred in her own reality TV show, which was cancelled after her behaviour became too bizarre, even for American viewers.

But yesterday the 39-year-old actress and model, who had been wracked by problems with drugs, alcohol and depression and lost her son to an overdose only five months ago, met an untimely end when she was found lying “unresponsive” in her sixth-floor room at a luxurious Florida hotel.

“I can confirm that she is deceased. It’s as shocking to me as to you guys,” Ronald Rale, her lawyer, said. “Poor Anna Nicole.”

Crime scene investigators were at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, last night as police began an investigation, saying that there was no immediate indication of the circumstances of her death. A postmortem examination will be performed today.

Ms Smith’s personal nurse, who travels with her and was the first to find her, had called the hotel switchboard for help at 1.45pm local time and a bodyguard attempted to revive her until the arrival of paramedics from the Seminole fire and rescue service. They administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation techniques and inserted a breathing tube in an attempt to bring her back to life but Ms Smith did not respond. She was rushed to the nearby Memorial Regional Hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead.

The sudden death came after several years of turbulence and tragedy for the model and triggered an immediate courtroom battle for custody of her five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, whose paternity is the subject of a legal dispute between her last two lovers.

Ms Smith, born Vickie Lynn Hogan, married J. Howard Marshall II, a Texas oil tycoon, in 1994, when she was 26 and a stripper, and he was wheelchair-bound and 89. Marshall died the following year, leaving her in a protracted battle with his son for his $1.6 billion (£820 million) estate.

She gave birth to a baby girl in the Bahamas last September, but three days later her son, Daniel, 20, who had been sleeping in her hospital room as she recovered from the birth, was found dead beside her bed after a methadone and antidepressant overdose.

Ms Smith named her baby in honour of her son, but before she had even buried him she was cavorting on a yacht in a wedding dress, claiming to have “married” her longtime friend and legal adviser, Howard K. Stern. Mr Stern, who claims to be the baby’s father, was said to be “speechless and grieving” last night.

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