What Really Happened to Anna Nicole Smith? The Loves, the Lies and Her Over-the-Top Life (Exclusive)

Anna Nicole Smith was famous for three years. She was infamous for 12, until her death from an accidental overdose in 2007.

In that time, the Texas native soared to the heights of celebrity and then fell and fell and fell.

Now, a new Netflix documentary (streaming May 16), Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me, examines her life and uncovers some of the lies — and loves — she kept hidden.

"She was this icon of female perfection," director Ursula Macfarlane tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. "Throughout her life, she was just trying to be what she thought other people wanted her to be. I don't know if Anna Nicole truly knew who she herself was."

In 1992, Smith's extraordinary beauty launched her from a small-town fried chicken joint server to the cover of Playboy and the face of Guess jeans. She earned parts in movies such as Naked Gun 33 1/3 and The Hudsucker Proxy. She smoldered from billboards, charmed late-night hosts like Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall, and walked the red carpet at the Oscars.

In 1994 she married 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall — she would soon lose him to pneumonia and, later, his fortune to his son in a case tried before the Supreme Court. She suffered a crippling drug addiction, was exploited by those who said they loved her, claimed her mother abused her, and likely suffered sexual abuse from her father as an adult.

She was a constant (and lucrative) target of the paparazzi.

"It's terrible the things I have to do to be me," Smith, who died at 39, liked to say. "You got to give people want they want, baby!" So, in 2002, she decided to give it all to the cameras of a reality show. "In the theme song, on The Anna Nicole Show, they sang, 'Anna, Anna, Anna, really truly outrageous.' She really was," says her friend Patrik Simpson.

"Hollywood put her in the fast lane," says Smith's Uncle George Beall, who recalls her wanting to be a comedic actress like Carol Burnett as a teenager. "I think it ruined her more than anything."

There are, however, some lingering questions about Smith.

"She made a lot of stuff up," her friend Missy Byrum puts it bluntly.

Byrum, 55, met "Nicki" at a Houston strip club where the two worked in the early 1990s. Smith, who'd chosen Nicki as a stage name, wasn't like a lot of the dancers. "All of us girls were abused in some way and we shared about it," Byrum says. "She didn't have any of that in her past."

Emotional algebra was solved: Sad stories equal attention. Later Byrum was shocked to find Smith was sharing Byrum's story of abuse as her own.

"Nicki adapted to get what she needed," Byrum says. "She started to manifest the character of Anna Nicole" years before Guess designer Paul Marciano gave her the name. "She learned from stripping that guys like to believe you're stupid if you're that pretty. She always said, 'It takes a smart person to be really dumb.'"

It also took some work to become Anna Nicole Smith. "She had all sorts of cosmetic procedures," says Byrum. "They cut her gums to make her teeth larger. Her boobs had stretch marks from having Daniel so she had some cosmetic guy grind off all the skin around her areolas. She was in constant pain." She had four breast augmentations. "That's where her addiction to pain pills began," says Byrum (who herself has struggled with substance abuse). "I have never seen anybody like it. She could take 15 Klonopins and 12 Valiums and drink on top of that."

By the time Smith found fame, she was already involved with Marshall, whom she'd met while dancing. He bought her a house, diamonds, a car and offered her and her son Daniel stability.

"She really loved him," says Beall. "The way he took care of her and looked out for her — she cared about him a lot. She didn't want people to think that she was after his money. [Her] Aunt Kay and I both said, 'If you love him, to heck with what people think!'"

He was also open-minded. "Mr. Marshall was a very intelligent man," says Byrum. "He knew that she was a young woman and needed certain things. He allowed her to have her boy toys or whatever."

Everyone fell in love with Smith, Byrum says. "I did too."

The two began a secret relationship in 1992, and Byrum says Smith proposed to her in 1993. "She gave me a set of rings and we got married in the backyard by the pool with champagne. ... She wanted me to have a baby with her. But I always knew it wasn't ever going to work out because she was never, ever going to settle down with one person."

Byrum says she walked away from Smith when Smith's addiction became too much to handle. "She needed more love than any one human being could give her."

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Smith's closest friends, who include Pol' Atteu and Simpon insist Anna Nicole was a character. The couple — who have an atelier in Beverly Hills and a reality show called Gown and Out in Beverly Hills — became close with Smith in the last years of her life.

"She was playing the part of Anna Nicole," says Atteu. "There were two different people. One was the celebrity superstar and television personality. Over the top, dumb blonde, what people wanted her to be, what would get her a paycheck."

The other was deeply human. "The intimate, real Anna Nicole. The shrewd businesswoman," he says, describing a woman who made deals with the paparazzi, tipping them off to her whereabouts, to make money. The one who figured out that sad stories about her pay more. Even if they are not her own.

Notes documentary producer Alexandra Lacey: "We idealize these types of celebrities, usually women, oftentimes blonde. Then they show us flaws, vulnerabilities, and in her case, a lot of physical and psychological pain. Then, suddenly, we don't wanna know them anymore."

Smith's mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, who died in 2018, once asked her daughter why she lies so much. Hogan shares this story in the documentary, recounting Smith's response: "I make more money telling sad stories than I make telling good stories. Any time my name is in the news, I am making money. If it's bad, something really bad, I make 50 times the amount I make if it's good."

The "sad stories" continued even after Smith's death. Following her funeral, her lawyer and partner Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead battled in court for months over the paternity of Smith's daughter Dannielynn before Birkhead was named her father.

Today, while it's clear her loved ones still wish her peace, it's also apparent they understood Anna Nicole Smith.

"There was such a circus when she died," remembers Byrum. "She would've loved it. I thought, 'She's gonna die just like she lived. She's gonna get all the attention.' And she did."

For more on Anna Nicole Smith, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me streams on Netflix starting May 16.