Girls gone wild

A crop of girls gone wild dominated the celebrity headlines this year but the death of former Playmate Anna-Nicole Smith loomed over them all like a platinum-blonde cautionary tale. Pop-music stars, Hollywood actresses, the talented and the talent-less, all found themselves in the news for the wrong reasons in 2007.
doweshowbellyad=0; Anna-Nicloe Smit (TOI Photo)Anna-Nicole Smith's death from an accidental drug overdose in a Florida hotel room in February at the age of 39 sparked a worldwide media frenzy, even if no-one could explain precisely why.Famed for her marriage to an octogenarian oil tycoon in 1994, Smith once appeared to be on the road to supermodel status after she replaced Claudia Schiffer as a Guess Jeans model in the early 1990s. But the public blonde-bombshell persona unravelled over the course of the following decade, the sudden death in the Bahamas in 2006 of her beloved son Daniel occurring just months before her own demise.
doweshowbellyad=0; Britney Spears attacking a photographer (TOI Photo)Smith’s struggle to find happiness was mirrored by the tortured 12 months endured by former pop princess Britney Spears and actress Lindsay Lohan. Spears and Lohan were two of the biggest names struggling to get their lives and careers back on track after a year where they seemed to lurch from one lurid tabloid headline to the next. Both stars checked in and out of rehabilitation centres more than once this year, with Spears’ increasingly erratic behaviour ultimately seeing her stripped of custody of her two children following her divorce from Kevin Federline.
Lohan, 21, found herself in the news after being discovered passed out in a hotel following the Golden Globes, a red flag warning that was followed by rehab. Yet it got worse when Lohan was caught for drunk driving and drug possession in May only to be nabbed for the same offences in July. Lohan eventually escaped a lengthy prison sentence, spending only 84 minutes behind bars.
While Lohan escaped with less than two hours behind bars, hotel heiress Paris Hilton was not so fortunate. The reality television star and professional ‘celebutante’ was shell-shocked after a Los Angeles judge sentenced her to 45 days prison in alcohol-related reckless driving case in May. However, the real drama was still to come. Released into home detention after spending just three days behind bars, she was swiftly hauled sobbing back to court where a judge ordered her returned to prison.
Ironically, Hilton’s co-star and friend Nicole Richie, 25, also spent time behind bars in 2007, albeit a less-than-harrowing 82 minutes, after being caught driving under the influence down the wrong way of a Los Angeles freeway.
But the roll-call of troubled celebrities extended beyond the LA bubble, most notably with British soul singer Amy Winehouse.
Although Winehouse enjoyed phenomenal success with her album Back to Black, which earned her six Grammy nominations, the talented 24-year-old’s life has appeared at times to be hurtling off the rails. A reported drug overdose in August was followed by a stint in rehab, which led to the cancellation of concert tours in the US.
But worse was to come the following month when the singer’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil was remanded in custody for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. But things got worse for Winehouse on December 18 when she was arrested in connection with her husband’s trial.