SHE was the daughter of a famous actor, a Beverly Hills socialite and had enjoyed a career as a supermodel in New York. She had even inspired a Hollywood movie.

For British-born Domino Harvey, however, beauty, wealth and stardom somehow went horribly wrong. At the time her body was pulled out of a bath in West Hollywood on Monday night at 11.11pm — presumed drowned — she was facing life in jail on charges of drug dealing, crossing state lines for unlawful activity and having property that was used in or obtained through criminal activity.

The charges, filed in the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, were the result of a bizarre change in career for Ms Harvey, who was 35 at the time of her death. As unlikely as it sounds, the former catwalk star and daughter of the Oscar-nominated Laurence Harvey, had become a bounty hunter — a mercenary who hunted down outlaws for the price on their heads.

Lieutenant Don Mauldin, of West Hollywood Sheriff’s station, said yesterday: “We got a call at 10.30 last night, saying that possibly a person had drowned in a bathtub. A friend or relative had called 911 from the house for paramedics. She was found in the bathtub.”

The Los Angeles coroner is expected to perform toxicology tests on Ms Harvey to see if drugs were involved.

“The hospital reported to us that they suspected a drug overdose,” a spokesman for the coroner said.

Tony Scott, the action film director who made the decision to turn Ms Harvey’s career into a Hollywood blockbuster — starring Keira Knightley as Domino, with other parts taken by Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset — had already been forced to re-shoot the ending to incorporate the drugs charges against her. Now Mr Scott may have to return to the editing room once again, to include the tragic end of Ms Harvey’s life.

There will also be heightened pressure on him to make the film truer to Ms Harvey’s life and explain the mystery of how she became a bounty hunter and alleged drug dealer. The film’s UK launch, which had already been put back four months from its planned opening date of August 19, may have to be delayed again.

In the film’s trailer, which has already been released, Ms Knightley fires a .50-calibre machinegun and utters the words: “My name is Domino Harvey, I am . . . a bounty hunter. What I say will determine whether or not I spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Ms Knightley recently said of the film: “I think that the whole concept of the story, the whole idea of this girl who’s from an extremely privileged background who completely turns her back on all of it and goes off on this wild path, is an extraordinary idea in itself.”

Ms Knightley added that she had met Ms Harvey once. “I did very briefly once, way before we started filming,” the actor said. “And originally, I thought that it would be really interesting to just play her totally and I’d do the voice and I’d do everything.

“But although this (movie) is totally inspired by her and her character, it isn’t true to her story. So I thought, ‘OK, it gives me a freedom to do what I want’.” She added that Ms Harvey was “very intelligent and just incredible”.

Friends and family of Ms Harvey gathered in tears inside her West Hollywood home yesterday. Letters remained uncollected in the letterbox.

It is thought that Ms Harvey may have been forced to sell the property, located in an affluent part of West Hollywood, near the celebrity hangouts of The Ivy and Morton’s, to pay the $1 million (£551,000) bail in her drugs case, which included a $300,000 cash deposit and property deed.

Later yesterday morning two women pulled up in a silver Volvo outside the address. The women were eventually joined by two men inside the bounty hunter’s house.

“Please leave us alone,” one of the women said. “Can’t you see this is very tough for us?”

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