You Don’t Know Me, a new Netflix documentary, analyzes and dispels preconceptions about the model and reality star – and reveals some unexpected truths. Her friends and relatives are present.

For three years, Anna Nicole Smith was well-known. She was popular for 12 years, until she died of an accidental overdose in 2007.

During that period, the Texas native rose to celebrity status, only to fall, fall, fall.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, a new Netflix documentary (available May 16), investigates her life and reveals some of the lies — and loves — she kept secret.

“She was this icon of female perfection,” director Ursula Macfarlane tells us on the cover of this week’s issue. “She spent her entire life trying to be what she felt other people wanted her to be. I’m not sure Anna Nicole actually understood who she was.”

Smith’s stunning beauty catapulted her from a small-town fried chicken business server to the cover of Playboy and the face of Guess jeans in 1992. She appeared in films like Naked Gun 33 1/3 and The Hudsucker Proxy. She smolded from billboards, charmed late-night presenters such as Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall, and walked the Oscars red carpet.

She married 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall in 1994; she would soon lose him to pneumonia and, later, his fortune to his son in a Supreme Court dispute. She battled a terrible drug addiction, was exploited by individuals who claimed to love her, claimed her mother assaulted her, and was likely sexually raped as an adult by her father.

She was a frequent (and profitable) target of the paparazzi.

“It’s terrible the things I have to do just to be me,” Smith, who died at the age of 39, used to remark. “You’ve got to give the people what they want, baby!” As a result, in 2002, she decided to reveal everything to the cameras of a reality show. “In The Anna Nicole Show’s theme song, they sang, ‘Anna, Anna, Anna, really truly outrageous.’ She was,” remembers her friend Patrik Simpson.

“Hollywood put her in the fast lane,” Smith’s Uncle George Beall adds, recalling her as a teenager yearning to be a comedy actress like Carol Burnett. “I think it ruined her more than anything.”

However, there remain several unanswered questions about Smith.

“She made a lot of stuff up,” says Missy Byrum, her friend.

Byrum, 55, met “Nicki” in the early 1990s while working at a Houston strip club. Smith, who’d adopted the stage name Nicki, wasn’t like the other dancers. “All of us girls were abused in some way, and we shared about it,” Byrum explains. “She didn’t have any of that in her past.”

Sad stories received equal attention, according to emotional algebra. Later, Byrum was surprised to see that Smith was sharing Byrum’s abuse narrative as her own.

“Nicki adapted to get what she needed,” explains Byrum. “She started to manifest the character of Anna Nicole” years before Guess designer Paul Marciano gave her the moniker. “She discovered while stripping that guys like to think you’re stupid if you’re that pretty.” “She used to say, ‘It takes a smart person to be really dumb.’”

It takes a lot of effort to become Anna Nicole Smith. “She had all sorts of cosmetic procedures,” recalls Byrum. “They shaved her gums to make her teeth bigger.” Her boobs were stretched from having Daniel, so she had a cosmetician remove all the flesh surrounding her areolas. She was in excruciating discomfort.” She underwent four breast augmentation procedures. “That’s where her addiction to pain pills began,” says Byrum, who has struggled with substance misuse herself. “I’ve never seen anything like it. She could take 15 Klonopins and 12 Valiums and then drink.”

Smith was already connected with Marshall, whom she met while dancing, by the time she rose to stardom. He gave her a house, jewels, and a car, as well as stability for her and her son Daniel.

“She really loved him,” Beall says. “The way he looked after her and looked out for her — she cared a lot about him.” She didn’t want others thinking she was pursuing his money. ‘If you love him, who cares what others say!’ remarked [her] Aunt Kay and I.

He was also open to new ideas. “Mr. Marshall was a very intelligent man,” Byrum says. “He recognized that she was a young woman in need of certain things.” He let her have her boy toys or whatever she wanted.”

Byrum claims that everyone fell in love with Smith. “I did it, too.”

The two started dating in secret in 1992, and Byrum claims Smith proposed to her in 1993. “She gave me a ring set, and we married in the backyard by the pool with champagne.” She desired that I have a child with her. But I knew it was never going to work since she would never, ever 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.”

Anna Nicole was a character, according to Smith’s closest pals, including Pol’ Atteu and Simpon. The couple, who run a Beverly Hills atelier and a reality show called Gown and Out in Beverly Hills, got close to Smith in her final years.

“She was playing the part of Anna Nicole,” Atteu explains. “There were two different people. The first was a celebrity and television personality. Over the top, dumb blonde, what people wanted her to be, what would get her a paycheck.”

The other was incredibly human. “The genuine, intimate 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 person who discovered that sad stories about her paid more. Even if they aren’t hers.

“We idealize these types of celebrities, usually women, often blonde,” says documentary producer Alexandra Lacey. Then they show us her weaknesses and vulnerabilities, as well as her bodily and psychological agony. Then, all of a sudden, we don’t want to know them.”

Smith’s late mother, Virgie Mae Hogan, reportedly asked her daughter why she lied so often. In the documentary, Hogan recounts Smith’s response: “I make more money telling sad stories than I do telling good stories.” I make money whenever my name appears in the news. If it’s horrible, truly bad, I make 50 times what I do when it’s good.”

Even after Smith’s death, the “sad stories” remained. 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,” Byrum recalls. “She would’ve loved it. I thought, ‘She’s gonna die just like she lived. She’ll be the center of attention.’ That she did.”