Singer, dancer and one-time Playboy magazine model Willa Ford will star as the late Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith in a biographical film about the billionaire s widow that starts shooting next week.

A publicist for Ford, best known for her hit single I Wanna Be Bad and a stint on the ABC television show Dancing with the Stars, confirmed a report in Wednesday s edition of the daily Variety that she was signed to play the title role in the film, Anna Nicole.

Like Smith, who sprang to fame as a model for the Guess? fashion line and as a Playboy s Playmate of the Year, Ford once posed nude for the men s magazine.

Variety said the independently produced movie would cover Smith s life from the age of 17 until her February 8 death in Florida from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, five months after giving birth to a baby girl, Dannielynn.

A dispute over the baby s paternity was settled on Tuesday when a court in the Bahamas released DNA test results showing that Smith s former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, was the child s father.

The baby could one day be worth millions if Smith s estate wins a decade-long battle to inherit a fortune from the late oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. He married Smith when she was 26 and he was 89. Marshall died 14 months later.

Ford, 26, a Florida native, began singing at age 8 in a children s choir and released her first album, Willa Was Here, in 2001, billing herself as the bad girl of pop.

In addition to the Anna Nicole film in the works, a book titled Train Wreck: The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith, written by Smith s half-sister, Donna Hogan, is due to hit bookstores this week.