LOS ANGELES — Lana Clarkson was disappointed in her career and worried about her future as an aging actress in Hollywood in the months before her death, two former friends told jurors at Phil Spector's murder trial Tuesday.

The men summoned to the witness stand by Spector's defense said Clarkson, 40, was desperate for celebrity, but could not find enough acting work to pay her rent or buy groceries.

"The most important thing to her was her career and becoming famous. That was everything," said John Barons, a playwright who worked with Clarkson the month before her death. (VIDEO)

He said she complained that "all the good roles" went to younger actresses and told him, "If you don't make it by the time you are 40 in this business, you might as well give up."

David Schapiro, another friend, said Clarkson often broke into tears as she spoke longingly of the one television or movie part that could propel her to stardom.

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"I would comfort her, tell her that there was still a lot of time, and she would cry," Schapiro recalled.

Spector's defense contends Clarkson, who had success as a young woman with starring roles in B movies, shot herself on Feb. 3, 2003, in the music legend's mansion, either accidentally or because she was depressed over the trajectory of her career.

Even as they detailed Clarkson's anxiety about her work, however, both men said she never spoke of taking her own life and they did not consider her suicidal.

Asked by a defense attorney about his reaction to an e-mail in which Clarkson said she was going to "tidy up my affairs and chuck it all," Schapiro said he found it "a bit overdramatic." (VIDEO)

Later, he agreed with a prosecutor's assessment of Clarkson as "high maintenance."

"She was given to overdramatics and sort of describing situations in terms..." he said.

"More dire than they were?" suggested the prosecutor.

"Yes," Schapiro said.

Playwright John Barons worked with Clarkson a month before her death.

The testimony of the men, the first close acquaintances of Clarkson's to take the stand, provided jurors with an initial glimpse of her personality. Often, it was an unflattering view. Clarkson ended her relationship with both men in the two months before her death, Barons because he fired her from his play and Schapiro because he reneged on a promise to loan her money.

Barons described Clarkson as an overbearing woman whose ambition outstripped her acting abilities. He said he considered her as "not really a great talent" and cast her in her dream part, a role as her idol, Marilyn Monroe, only because he thought her friend Roger Corman, the cult film director, might attend his play, "Brentwood Blondes."

"It was shallow of me," he admitted.