Mischa Barton - VEntertainmentOnline.com

Mischa Barton Biography

Mischa Barton shot to stardom playing the role of Marissa Cooper in the American television series "The O.C." Her face was on the cover of every magazine and she was the epitome of every beautiful Californian girl.

But over the last few years she has been hitting the headlines for entirely different reasons. On December 27th 2007 she was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, possession of marijuana and driving without a valid licence.

Police stopped her in the early hours of the morning in West Hollywood when she was seen straddling the lanes and failing to signal a turn. She was detained and released later the same morning on bail for $10,000. She was subsequently charged with driving without a licence and driving under the influence.

In April 2008 Barton was sentenced by a Los Angeles judge to 36 months probation and told to attend alcohol education classes. She also had to pay a large fine.

After that she went into complete meltdown and police were called to her home in July 2009 on a medical matter. They found the young star on a path of self-destruction, she was acting in a suicidal way and friends said afterwards if the police had not intervened, they really believed she would have killed herself.

She loathed her body and had very low self-esteem. She had been partying hard and she lost many of her friends because they could not cope with her when she was so volatile. She was spiralling deeper and deeper into a debauched life and she refused to change her ways.

Police escorted her from the house and she was sectioned in a psychiatric clinic at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. Because of her problems she had to pull out of the New York Premiere of her new film, "The Homecoming."

She responded to treatment at the clinic and when she was released she went back to work, filming her new television show "The Beautiful Life" produced by Ashton Kutcher in which she plays Sonja Stone a pill popping model. The filming had been held back whilst she was in the clinic.

But still trouble is not far away from Barton. On January 21st 2010 she was sued by her New York landlord for refusing to pay three months rent in her apartment at $7000 a month.

Once the glamorous model, she has started to wear some strange clothes to draw attention to herself. In November 2010 she was photographed wearing a leopard coat over a pink dress and a baggy orange T shirt. To top off the outrageous look, she wore a huge pair of butterfly sunglasses.

She was driving her $15,000 light blue Cadillac convertible that she bought in February 2010 which has caused her problems since the day she purchased it.

Minutes after leaving the garage she ran out of petrol. In May she hit another vehicle when she was trying to park the extra-long car and the following month it broke down three times.

She had it repaired but a few weeks later it had to be towed away in the early hours of the morning when it failed to start.

The English daughter of a foreign exchange banker has dual nationality. She was born in Hammersmith, West London but her father's job took them to New York City when she was 6-years-old. Ten days after her 20th birthday she became a naturalised citizen of the Unites States of America but she retained her British Citizenship.