“Brittany Murphy, 32, died early this morning after she went into full cardiac arrest and could not be revived, multiple sources tell TMZ,” the story says. A terrible thing. Ghastly, sad…like a plot turn in a Brett Easton Ellis novel.

Brittany Murphy (1977 — 2009)

Good God…I met Brittany four or five years ago at Chris McGurk‘s house, at one of his year-end outdoor parties. “Hello…how are you?” she said as we stood by a tiki torch near the backyard pool.

“A 911 call was reportedly made at 8:00 am from a home in Los Angeles that is listed as belonging to her husband, Simon Monjack. Murphy was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was pronounced dead on arrival.”

I’m presuming Murphy died of natural causes. Death happens occasionally to entertainment industry veterans in their early 30s. They’re grooving along and working hard, and all of a sudden they fall over dead. It’s an urban myth that only older people expire due to the body simply giving out. It happens to people of all ages all the time. You can be a neg-head and say younger Los Angelenos tend to die from drug abuse, but HE won’t go there. It’s not compassionate to presume such a thing.

Seriously, I suspect that she died of a withered career. She seemed to fall away from things over the last two or three years. The roles weren’t happening, etc.

Murphy’s best role, I feel, was in Karen Moncrieff‘s The Dead Girl (2006). She was vivid and pistol-hot in Eight Mile (’02) and Sin City (’05), but these were limited sex-bomb roles. Riding in Cars Witn Boys (’01) was more interesting. One of her worst films was Just Married (2003) with Ashton Kutcher. The IMDB says Murphy has three features in post-production — The Expendables, Something Wicked and Abandoned.