'''Nicole Camille Richie''' (born September 21, 1981) is an American socialite, author, actress, and singer, and is best known for being the daughter of singer Lionel Richie and for her role in ''
The Simple Life''.
Biography
Early life
Nicole Richie was born in Berkeley, California. Her biological father is widely rumored to be Afro-Latino musician Pete Escovedo, brother of 1980s pop percussionist Sheila E. and son of famed Latin percussionist Pete Escovedo, but this was directly denied by Nicole in the November 2005 issue of ''Jane'' magazine. According to an April 2006 ''Tatler'' magazine interview with Nicole, her biological father was a drummer who worked with Lionel Richie; her biological mother was a backstage assistant for Lionel. When Nicole was 3, Lionel and his wife Brenda Harvey-Richie informally adopted her and raised her as their daughter. When she was 9, they went through the legal formalities of the adoption; she still speaks with her biological mother who is also of Afro-Latin diaspora - currently resides in the Dominican Republic.
A year later, Lionel and Brenda split, and in their guilt over the separation, "Their way of making me happy was to say yes to everything I wanted, but I don't think a little girl should have that much freedom," said Richie in an interview with ''Vanity Fair'' magazine
[http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/pressroom3 Vanity Fair - Press Room: Nicole Richie Talks About Her Weight, Being a Role Model, and What Happened with Paris]. She used marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, was arrested three times, and had five car accidents. Not until she went into drug rehabilitation in 2003 did Richie and her parents have an open conversation about her addiction."I'm now, at 24, just learning to deal with my problems instead of concealing them with drugs," she said in the interview.
Nicole has studied the cello, violin, piano, and some figure skating, and she has plans to pursue a music career. She also attended the University of Arizona for two years after graduating from high school. She stated, "I went to the University of Arizona. I stopped because I went there for two years and I felt like I experienced college or whatever. I'm over it." Her godfather is Michael Jackson.
Nicole and Paris Hilton starred in the 2003 reality series ''
The Simple Life'', in which they lived for a month with a family in the rural community of Altus, Arkansas. Later seasons of the show had Richie and Hilton in a road-trip across the United States, and an East Coast trek on a Greyhound bus while performing various internships.
On 20 April 2005, amid
