Michael Heller takes celebrity liabilities and turns them into assets.

He has hooked his clients’ products to the wagons of famous people with problems. For Ariva, a tobacco substitute lozenge, his Talent Resources Inc. agency signed celebutante Lindsay Lohan as a spokesperson because she was trying to conquer her tobacco addiction. For a psoriasis treatment, he drafted Caridee English, the first winner of “America’s Top Model” after she admitted she suffered from the condition.

His most recent adventure was bringing Paris Hilton to Australia for a New Year’s Eve party, where the heiress best known for her scandalous behavior helped launch TheBongoVirus.com, a social networking Web site.

Founded in 2005, Talent Resources, based in Los Angeles and with offices in New York, pairs products with famous spokespeople. That’s not unusual, but Heller does it with a twist: He tries to find that personal connection, even if it might seem problematic.

Such synergies “effectively blur the lines between paid endorsement and loyal product user,” Heller said.

Hilton was picked for TheBongoVirus because “she’s known as an Internet-friendly celebrity,” he explained.

Talent Resources has made deals with celebrities Mariah Carey, Rachel Hunter, Kevin Federline and Mischa Barton. He picked Lohan for Ariva because she was about to record an album.

“She was smoking way too much, and I knew she needed to quit or at least cut way down to prepare for the recording sessions,” Heller recalled. “Ariva loved it, and the campaign gave her a reason to stop smoking.”

Heller’s most unconventional deal occurred when he met with English, the first winner of the “America’s Next Top Model” TV show. English confessed her embarrassment about her psoriasis, a chronic skin condition.

Heller’s staff immediately called pharmaceutical companies looking for an endorsement deal. They found one with Merck Serono International, maker of the psoriasis drug Raptiva.

Since then, the stunning blonde has spoken about psoriasis on Capitol Hill and at medical conventions often to capacity crowds. She has become the official spokesperson for the National Psoriasis Foundation.

In the end, English profited from what had once embarrassed her.

Financially, the Raptiva deal “was a bigger contract than any modeling contract she ever had,” Heller said.