Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press Anna Nicole Smith leaves the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2006 after her successful appeal in her battle for her late husband's estate. Click photo for larger image. See an interactive timeline on the life of Anna Nicole Smith, from the Associated Press

If her life were a movie, it would seem so implausible it'd go straight to video. If it were a reality TV show, it'd get canned for being too unreal.

In fact, the life of Anna Nicole Smith was more bizarre than any media creation, and her sudden death yesterday of unknown causes put an unexpected twist ending on a story that was larger, and weirder, than life.

With the U.S. Supreme Court declaring last year that Ms. Smith deserved another chance at the estate of her octogenarian billionaire husband, and the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter in dispute, there may be a sequel to her strange story.

Ms. Smith, 39, collapsed around 2 p.m. yesterday at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel in Hollywood, Fla., where she was a frequent guest and was scheduled to check out today. She had complained of flu-like symptoms. A private nurse called for an ambulance and bodyguards administered CPR. Doctors at a hospital north of Miami said they temporarily restored her breathing, but she was declared dead at 2:49 p.m.

An autopsy is scheduled for today.

Ms. Smith's abrupt death ended a roller-coaster life that had become a train wreck. She was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, Texas, one of six children of Donald Eugene and Virgie Hart Hogan.

At 18, while working at a fried chicken restaurant, she fell in love with fry cook Billy Smith. Their marriage lasted two years. She started modeling at 20 and adopted her stage name.

The young Texan's life took a giant turn in 1991 when, while working as a topless dancer at a Houston nightclub, she caught the eye of Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, who was 63 years her senior. With his patronage and rumored investment in her breast implants, Ms. Smith's modeling career soared. She was named Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month in 1992, Playmate of the Year in 1993 and became a spokesmodel for Guess jeans.

In 1994, the 26-year-old married the 89-year-old oil billionaire. Her soap-opera life grew more bizarre when he died the following year, setting off a legal feud with her former stepson over her cut of the family's $1.6 billion fortune. In the wrangling, she won then lost $474 million and declared bankruptcy.

Ms. Smith made several critically panned films, including "Naked Gun 33¹/₃: The Final Insult" and "Skyscraper," starred in the soft-porn title "Anna Nicole: Exposed," and most recently hosted a cable-TV reality series, "The Anna Nicole Show."

Her last 12 months were perhaps the strangest. In May, 2006, she won a Supreme Court case guaranteeing her another day in court with her 67-year-old stepson. He died a month later, and the Marshall family vowed to continue challenging her claim to her ex-husband's estate.

On Sept. 7, she gave birth to a daughter, Dannie Lynn Hope, and on Sept. 10, her 20-year-old son, Daniel, died suddenly while visiting her and his newborn sister at the hospital. Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, former Allegheny County coroner and medical examiner, performed a privately commissioned autopsy and determined that he had low levels of three drugs in his system when he died.

Her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, announced on CNN's "Larry King Live," that he is the baby's father, but paparazzi photographer Larry Birkhead subsequently filed a paternity suit to force DNA testing intended to prove she's his child. Ms. Smith resisted the testing, but suffered a legal setback in her case shortly before her death.

Yesterday, cable news channels broke into programming to cover Ms. Smith's passing as they might report the death of a major star or world leader.

Dr. Wecht called the public reaction to her death "incredible."

"These kinds of celebrities, even more than political celebrities, seem to capture the imagination and hold the attention of the American public," he said.

But Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said it's really not that unusual.

"She wasn't known as a great talent, but she was very well known," he said. "One of the most famous people of the 19th century was General Tom Thumb, who was discovered by P.T. Barnum and was famous for being really small. There's a place for that in the culture. People talk about her being famous for being famous, but that's meaningless. She became famous for a series of events, and then was able to remain in the public eye."

Mr. Thompson said the first episodes of Ms. Smith's reality-TV show that aired on E! were "jaw-dropping" in their ridiculousness, "like taking the kids to the zoo. But that's why we laugh. It's very deep -- the fact that all primates seem to respect celebrity implies that it's more than just us being crazy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Let's face it, celebrities get one thing in this country that we like more than wealth: unmitigating slobbering attention. It may seem stupid to want to be nearby or know about them, but our stories about being near them carry a lot of capital."

CNN's Larry King yesterday called Ms. Smith "a special person. She was an unusual person, she was genuine."

Dr. Wecht, who is not involved in today's autopsy of Ms. Smith, said it's unlikely a clear cause of death will be quickly established. He said a microscopic exam of the heart will most likely be conducted during the autopsy and that toxicology tests generally take about two weeks.

"The possibilities here: she said she had a fever, was run down, woozy," he said. "A viral pneumonia has been known to produce death and is not rare. A pulmonary embolism -- a blood clot -- can produce sudden death. A heart attack, but I have no reason to believe she had heart disease.

"I don't want to finesse this, but a real possibility is drug overdose when you have the sudden death of a young person and you're not thinking of heart disease."