Nicole Richie - Biography

In a nutshell

Nicole is a strange celebrity creature. Unlike Paris Hilton, she always seems to hover around in the background, rarely coming forward to entertain us with stupid outbursts or more ridiculous reality TV shows. So what does she do?

I bet you think you know who her daddy is, right? Richie? Lionel Richie? Well, that's what we thought too. But apparently not and it doesn't look easy to try and figure out who her parents are, despite our best efforts. Lionel is only her guardian, and has raised her since the age of two.

It's later in life when things get really interesting. Nicole met Paris Hilton while they were at kindergarten and the pair grew up together. So they were BFF for a while. Which stands for 'Best Friends Forever' if any of you dorks didn't know...

'The Simple Life' was a TV show devised by MTV with a simple premise; make two posh, rich girls live with a 'simple' family in some hick town in America and see how they get on. Cue lots of complaints about tragic incidents like 'I've broken a nail!!!!' or 'Ewwww, that smells so like totally gross!!!'. Dumb, we know, but it's an absolutely fantastic show.

Paris and Nicole actually had a bit of a falling out in 2005 but the cause of the split was never actually revealed. Paris indicated it was Nicole who was at fault but refused to give any more details. They've since sorted things out and appear to be on the road back to BFF heaven.

In 2003, Richie was arrested and charged with being in possession of heroin while driving with a suspended driving license. Naughty girl! A second incident saw her put into jail, for a grand total of 82 minutes. Surely that's a record?

It's looking like Nicole is pretty loved-up at the moment. She's been dating Joel Madden of Good Charlotte 'fame'. We keep seeing plenty of photos of the pair knocking around LA and the like, with the usual dark shades. They've recently given birth to their first child, named Harlow Winter Kate Madden, with Richie claiming it 'gives life a whole new meaning and a whole new purpose'. The reported $1million magazine deal was probably just an after-thought.

Did you know?

Nicole trained for around 8 hours a day as a child to become an Olympic figure skater. We don't know where that dream went....