O.J. Simpson Reportedly Claimed Anna Nicole Smith's Daughter Could Be His

In the 1990s, Anna Nicole Smith became a household name after posing for Playboy and starring in a major Guess ad campaign, but her personal life is what really kept her in the news. The buxom blonde model was involved with many men in her heyday, including 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall II,  whom she married in 1994 –- and who died one year later –  as well as fashion designer Christian Audigier and a very married Prince Frederic von Anhalt. By the time Smith gave birth to her daughter, Dannielynn, in 2006, she was believed to be in a relationship with her lawyer and companion, Howard K. Stern.

But when Smith died suddenly in 2007, multiple men claimed to be the father of then 5-month-old Dannielynn, including a little-known photographer named Larry Birkhead –  and a very well-known O.J. Simpson. That's right, more than a decade after his murder trial, the fallen former football star came out of the left field with a bizarre claim about him and Smith that no one saw coming.

After the tragic death of Anna Nicole Smith, her then-partner Howard K. Stern took custody of her baby. But Prince Frederic von Anhalt, who was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor at the time, held a press conference to announce that he believed that he was the father of Dannielynn.

If that wasn't strange enough, O.J. Simpson also hinted that he also may have fathered the child. In 2007, Simpson's business manager, Norm Pardo, told Page Six that the former NFL running back made a stunning revelation to him. "He said he knew Anna Nicole pretty well, and he said he had slow-moving sperm, and he might be the father," Pardo claimed Simpson told him at the time. 

Simpson and Smith did know each other. They were co-stars in the movie "Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult" and sat side-by-side during a 1994 episode of "The Phil Donahue Show" to promote the film, but there was never evidence that they had a romantic relationship. But Simpson, who was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1995, reportedly went so far as to tell Pardo that he hoped a DNA test would not be done on Dannielynn because if it was found that she was his child, he was afraid the Goldman family would try to take her money.

In the end, it turned out that neither O.J. Simpson, Howard K. Stern, nor Prince von Anhalt was the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn. Instead, the child was fathered by Larry Birkhead, Smith's secret boyfriend who doubled as her photographer. In an interview with ABC News, Birkhead revealed that he met Smith in Kentucky in 2003 while doing photography work at the annual Barnstable-Brown Gala, and he later moved to Los Angeles to live with her in secret. "No one ever knew one time that I was her boyfriend," Birkhead revealed. "She didn't want me in the spotlight."

By the time Smith gave birth to their daughter three years later, they had broken up, and Smith was living in the Bahamas. She publicly played off Stern as the baby's father and named him as Dannielynn's dad on the birth certificate, per Today. But Birkhead knew the timeline. After DNA was taken and a paternity test determined once and for all that Birkhead was indeed Dannielynn's biological father, Stern stepped back and vowed not to fight him over custody. 

As for Simpson, he has been the subject of other paternity rumors over the years. During a 2023 appearance on the "Full Send" podcast, he denied the long-standing rumor that he had an affair with Kris Jenner and is the father of Khloe Kardashian. "I always thought Kris was a cute girl, she was really nice," Simpson said. "But I was dating supermodels. The rumor ain't true. It's not even anywhere close to being true."