Charlize Theron to Play Anna Nicole Smith?

In a race to make a film of Smith's life began Charlize Theron is front-runner to play the role of the former Playmate whose life met with a tragic ending last week. Her tumultuous life is set to become a film with a who's who of casting co-stars. With a surplus of Hollywood actresses to portray the troubled former realty TV star Theron has emerged above and beyond the others. As the film version of Smith's life in set in motion the legal battles over who gets her remains and has the right to choose her place of burial continues.

New twists and bizarre turns are surfacing about the final months of the doomed former Playmate on a daily basis. The media covers story after story up to the minute making the death of Smith as in her life a scandal for the world to see. Yesterday the judge gave permission for Smith's body to be embalmed for a possible open-casket funeral, after her lawyer revealed that she had already ordered her funeral dress. "We want to preserve the beauty and model figure of Miss Smith," Florida Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin said. "Beauty was important to her."

Ron Rale, Smith's lawyer, said Smith had ordered a dress for her own funeral after her son, Daniel who died of an apparent drug overdose in September three days after to her daughter Dannielynn was born. "There's a dress Anna Nicole had. The dressmaker had been preparing a dress," Mr Rale said. As no less than three sets of lawyers gather in court to fight over Smith's corpse, her will was made public, creating new legal chaos. The 2001 document left all her property to her lawyer and longtime companion, Howard Stern, to hold in trust for her son Daniel, who is now deceased.

The 16-page will appeared to exclude five-month old Dannielynn who is at the center of a tug-of-war between two men claiming to be the father. Smith, who stood to inherit a fortune from her billionaire late husband, wrote: "I have intentionally omitted to provide for my spouse and other heirs, including future spouses and children and other descendants now living and those hereafter born or adopted."