[citation needed] Total Film magazine quoted Bleeth stating, "When I was a little girl I used to have to force boys to kiss me.

She died within a year at the age of 47, after which Bleeth dealt with her grief, thus: "I stayed home, watching cooking shows, taking walks."

She turned down acting offers for eight months, but then won the role of LeeAnn Demerest on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live.

Aaron Spelling was so eager to cast Bleeth in the role of a vixen on Titans that his company convinced CBS to grant her an early release from her Nash Bridges contract.

In an interview with Dennis Hensley, she said she delighted in her over-the-top depiction of a crazed beauty queen in the 1997 TV film Crowned and Dangerous.

Following her first effort in a drug rehabilitation clinic in late 2000 (see below), Bleeth only shot one more performance, the 2003 television film Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding.

[11] Bleeth met her future husband, strip club owner Paul Cerrito, in December 2000 when she voluntarily entered the Malibu-based Promises Rehabilitation Clinic to overcome a cocaine dependence.

[18] Bleeth was the 1998 spokesperson for the Lee National Denim Day fundraising campaign, which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education.

On September 12, 2001, Bleeth was arrested in Romulus, Michigan, after she drove her car off the highway onto a median strip on Interstate 94 as she and her future husband, Paul Cerrito, were heading to Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

[citation needed] Bleeth's lawyer, Jerry Sabbota, stated after sentencing that the actress was satisfied with the plea bargain, noting that her record will be cleared of any felonies after she fulfills the terms of her probation.

[citation needed] In an issue of Glamour from April 2003, Bleeth wrote a three-page article titled "Back from My Drugs Hell" about her rocky path to recovery, her cocaine addiction, and her struggle to remain sober.

Bleeth wrote that her cocaine habit was so severe that she collapsed at a photo shoot for Glamour, and she went without sleep for five days at a time.