Anna Nicole Smith passed away when her daughter was five months old. Dannielynn has been raised by her protective father, who has kept her out of the Hollywood limelight. When she posted a rare selfie, viewers spotted one detail that they just couldn’t ignore.
The career and legacy of Anna Nicole Smith are well known. She modeled for fashion brands such as Guess, H&M, Heatherette, and Lane Bryant. She even had her own reality sitcom, The Anna Nicole Show, which ran for two seasons on E! The first season was the most-watched show on the network.
Anna Nicole’s life, however, ended tragically due to an accidental drug overdose on February 8, 2007. Her son Daniel Wayne Smith died a few months earlier from a combination of drugs, including methadone and antidepressants, on September 10, 2006. Dannielynn, her infant daughter, was just five months old at the time of Anna Nicole’s death.
Larry Birkhead was determined to be Dannielyn’s father during an infamous paternity suit. As a single father, the photographer has been raising his daughter in rural Kentucky. Birkhead has made it obvious that he is doing everything he can to ensure Dannielynn’s childhood is as normal as possible, which includes refusing to thrust her into the spotlight.
“I’ve had companies call me since [Dannielynn appeared in a Guess campaign] and ask for her to model, and that answer’s no,” Birkhead said during a 20/20 interview in 2017. “She doesn’t show any interest in it. She wants to be a kid.” During the same interview, he stated that Dannielynn enjoyed doing ordinary things, like Girl Scouts, Snapchat, eating French fries, and taking care of her pet lizard.
“I think here in Kentucky is as normal as you can get,” Birkhead told Inside Edition in 2017. “She loves school. She loves her friends. I just hope that she dreams big and accomplishes a lot.” When Dannielynn was beginning to look into going to college, Birkhead told People Magazine about his fears now that she’s all grown up.
“It’s one of those things where she’s just now dipping her toe into getting stuff, and people are mailing her things,” he said. “And every time I get something in the mail for college, I don’t know if I really want to give her this because she might take them up on this offer and go somewhere to college.”
Dannielynn shares an Instagram account with her dad. The father-daughter duo shared some rare selfies, and fans couldn’t help but notice how much Damnnielynn resembles her mother. The proud father sees similarities between his daughter and her late mother, claiming she is “generous” like Anna Nicole. “And at the same time, she’s a picky eater like her mom. Oh, my gosh!” he laughed. “She eats no meat at all. One time in her life, she’s eaten meat. She does not eat meat at all, but she’s not a gigantic vegetable fan, either.”
“It’s been a struggle ever since she was little,” he added. “She’s a big pasta eater, loves pizza, and things, and we add vitamins and different things to get her well-rounded. She gets a lot of sauce on her pizza. Her mom was a sauce, a condiment freak. She would just extra, extra, extra, extra everything and load it down. And that’s how Dannielynn is.”
The father-daughter team spends a significant amount of time together. They go to the Kentucky Derby every year and even spent a Father’s Day at a Duran Duran concert. Larry Birkhead described how he was dreading the day Dannielynn would leave to go off on her own. “It’s one of those things that all parents go through,” he said. “They don’t want their kids to go off, but they know they have to.”
Even though Birkhead rarely posts on social media, when he does, supporters are always applauding him on a job well done as a father. After Anna Nicole Smith died, Birkhead found himself in a difficult position as a parent, but he seems to have risen to the occasion. Dasnielynn might look like her mother’s twin now that she is an adult, but she has no wish to follow in her mother’s tragic footsteps.
