FACTBOX: O.J. Simpson on trial again

(Reuters) - Jury selection began on Monday in former football star O.J. Simpson's trial on charges of robbery and kidnapping.

Simpson and a co-defendant face charges stemming from what prosecutors said was the armed robbery of his own memorabilia from two collectors at a Las Vegas hotel and casino in 2007.

Here are a few facts about Simpson.

* EARLY LIFE:

-- Orenthal James Simpson was born in one of San Francisco's roughest neighborhoods, the Potrero Hill housing projects, on July 9, 1947, Simpson as a youngster suffered from rickets and had to wear leg braces. He recovered from the disease but it left him bowlegged.

-- He developed into a star football player at Galileo High School. At the University of Southern California, he led his team to a national championship and won the coveted Heisman Trophy. In 1973, with the Buffalo Bills, he became the first professional to record 2,000 rushing yards in a season.

-- After his football career, Simpson appeared in movies, including some of the "Naked Gun" series, and advertising campaigns.

* BATTERED IMAGE:

-- Simpson saw his carefully honed image battered beyond recognition after his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, a waiter at the restaurant where she had just dined, were found stabbed and slashed to death in front of her Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.

-- Suspicion quickly fell on Simpson and he was arrested after leading police on a freeway pursuit broadcast live on U.S. national television. He was acquitted of murder charges in October 1995 after a televised trial.

-- The victims' families brought a wrongful death suit against Simpson, and in 1997 a civil court jury found him liable for the deaths. Simpson was ordered to pay the families $33.5 million in damages.

-- Simpson, who moved to Florida with his two younger children, has done little to satisfy the judgment despite years of collection efforts by the victims' families.

* MORE TROUBLE:

-- "If I Did It," Simpson's hypothetical account of his ex-wife's slaying, hit No. 2 on the New York Times best-sellers list for non-fiction a year ago. Goldman's family has seized the rights to the ghost-written book.

-- In the latest case, Simpson and co-defendant Clarence Stewart will go on trial on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery. Simpson was accused of leading a group of men who stormed into a Las Vegas hotel room in 2007 and took sports memorabilia at gunpoint from two collectors. He was briefly jailed in September 2007.

* Simpson was freed from a further few days in a Las Vegas jail in January 2008, for trying to contact a defendant in the armed-robbery case, a case that could send him to prison for life.

(Writing by David Cutler and Paul Grant, London Editorial Reference Unit; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)