Today, Anna Nicole Smith was pronounced dead after the ambulance staff and her personal nurse tried CPR on her for about ten minutes, in a desperate attempt to bring life back into her collapsed body. They failed to do so. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was already considered dead and the medical personnel did not even try to revive her. Smith was 39.

We all knew who she was. After all, it was hard not to know Anna Nicole Smith, since she was always in all the headlines. Her life has been a joyride and a nightmare at the same time, when the media attention she so desperately sought at the beginning of her career suddenly turned against her. Many criticized her life and her celebrity status but even more claimed that she was, until her final hour, a true 'celebrity'.

Always courting and inviting controversy, Anna led a hectic life on the front pages of the tabloids. She became famous thanks to 'Playboy' and for marrying a man 60 years her senior, whom she claimed she loved until his last hour, 14 months after they had exchanged vows. More recently, Anna saw herself again in the middle of a media scandal, when her son died in suspicious circumstances, only days later after she had given birth. Daniel Smith was 21 and his body was found lifeless by his mother's bedside.

Later, Anna 'married' her former lawyer Howard K. Stern during a non-binding ceremony in the Bahamas, apparently thus trying to stop one of her former lovers, Larry Birkhead, from getting custody of the newborn Dannielynn. Nevertheless, Birkhead filed a paternity lawsuit against her, demanding that she bring the baby girl back to the US for a DNA testing. She was supposed to fly to California to submit the baby to the test later this month.

Anna's body was found by her personal nurse, collapsed on the floor of her hotel suite in Hard Rock Resort and Casino in Hollywood. The nurse immediately called the ambulance but, by the time they arrived, there was nothing left to do to help her. They pronounced her dead shortly before 3 P.M., after they took her covered body to Hollywood's Memorial Regional Hospital.

Neither Dannielynn nor Howard K. Stern were in the room when Anna collapsed. An autopsy has been ordered by the police, to establish the exact cause of death, although right now, speculation has it that it was either heart failure or drug overdose. A police investigation is now trying to establish if there is any foundation for the latter, by searching the suite in which she was staying.

People say she was 'like Marilyn Monroe', her personal idol ever since she was a little country girl: shocking, controversial, tragic and permanently in the spotlight. Others say that, because she wanted to live glamorously like Marilyn, she also died like her, in similar circumstances. The fact remains: Anna Nicole Smith, the world's favorite trainwreck, the biggest tabloid character of our times is no longer with us. We loved her, we hated her and we loved to hate her... for that, she was and will always remain a true 'celebrity'. RIP.