Elizabeth Hurley: ‘People were startled that my son directed my sex scene – to us it’s no big deal’

Can it really have been 30 years since Elizabeth Hurley wore That Dress? A whole three decades since that gravity-defying sliver of artfully cut Versace black silk, Lycra and strategically placed Medusa-head gold safety pins upstaged not only Hugh Grant (Hurley’s boyfriend at the time), but the entire Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere, thereby creating the ultimate red-carpet moment against which all others shall be judged?

Looking back at it now, the serendipitous nature of it all – no stylists involved, no contracts exchanged (the dress was a last-minute borrow from a PR, offered in a white plastic bag) – is so rogue, it’s almost impossible to imagine it happening today.

‘Well, I have nothing but fond memories of 1994,’ says Hurley, now 58. ‘It was an amazing time for me personally, and you’re right, it was an amazing time for fashion. And I think for the UK in general. It is a little odd to me that people are still interested in that particular dress and they frequently tell me when it’s having a birthday… But why not? It was a wonderful dress.’

Of course, Hurley went on to become friends with Gianni Versace (‘It was a terrible loss when his life ended so horribly’), and that fashion house has remained a golden thread in her life: ‘I’ve also worn fabulous dresses from Donatella’s time at the helm… Donatella oversaw my wedding in 2007 [to her now ex Arun Nayar]. And I had many dresses because I got married in England and India. Those are some of the best pieces that I’ve ever had. I mean, the workmanship is exquisite.’

Elizabeth Hurley – actor, model, producer and swimwear brand founder – is chatting to me in her pretty Herefordshire sitting room. She’s dressed cosily in a grey cashmere sweater, and her eye make-up is perfectly smoky (‘Really? It took three minutes’). Hurley explains that she and her son Damian have just returned to the UK after a sojourn in Los Angeles, where they attended Elton John and David Furnish’s Academy Awards viewing party (she’s a patron of the Elton John Aids Foundation) and Hurley had her Telegraph photo shoot with Ellen von Unwerth at Chateau Marmont.

‘And the boiler had decided to stop working. So there was no water, no heat when we walked in the door from Los Angeles: not great,’ she groans. ‘And I’m, well, a little stressed because it’s the lead-up to our movie in the US… So we’re busy trying to make that as successful as we can… And right now I’m about to start packing again, organising all my outfits, which has been driving me demented upstairs, trying to unpack and make sure I’ve covered all the stuff we’ve got to do next week.’

By the time you read this story, Damian Hurley’s directorial debut – Strictly Confidential, a ghostly erotic thriller shot over 18 days in the Caribbean, which Hurley produced and in which she also plays a supporting role that happens to involve a saucy Sapphic sex scene – will have been launched into the world. (The fulminating headlines, from those commentators who tend to fulminate about such things, began a little earlier.)

‘Yes, of course, people have got their knickers in a twist about it a bit,’ she says. ‘But actually for us it wasn’t a big deal at all, just one of the seven scenes we were shooting on that day. We didn’t have a lot of time. It was a night scene… and the minute it gets dark the mosquitoes start dive-bombing you… There was a bit of exposed flesh for the mosquitoes to get… We didn’t really think about it very much. Though I know other people think it’s sort of rather startling.’

It doesn’t surprise me that Hurley is unruffled by this storm in a thimble; she is, after all, a trouper. In fact, there’s something ever-so-slightly scout mistress-y about her valiant just-get-on-with-it attitude. So many of the Hollywood celebrities I have interviewed over the years have at some point in our conversation mistily confessed that they always knew they were special (or some such jaw-dropping admission of self-regard). Hurley is quite the opposite – self-deprecating, funny, unpretentious. ‘You know, show business is a fairly evil business. It’s tough, and you have to be fairly tough to keep going. I’ve been at it a long time now, so I’m not giving up.’

As an actor she is often at her best in comic roles (the camper, the better; I give you Vanessa Kensington in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery).

And she was way ahead of the curve as a celebrity beauty brand ambassador. She tells me that she was originally cast for her Estée Lauder contract after Leonard Lauder (Estée’s son) asked the then-editor of Tatler, Jane Proctor, who had been the most successful cover star of 1994. ‘And she said it was me.’ Lauder hadn’t heard of Hurley, but after Proctor sent over her October 1994 cover, he decided to test her.

‘I’d never modelled a day in my life, but I was flown to New York and Albert Watson did two days of photographic tests with me… and somehow we stumbled through it,’ she deadpans. When her first campaign debuted in 1995, The New York Times ran an article under the headline ‘Can This Face Sell a Million Lipsticks?’ questioning whether a sexy actor was a safe choice for the brand. (Back in the ’90s, these lucrative gigs tended to be the preserve of supermodels.)

Hurley had the last laugh, of course. She has been on the Lauder books for 29 years now and is the global ambassador for the Estée Lauder Companies’ Breast Cancer Campaign. Stylist Ann Caruso, who dresses Hurley for her breast-cancer campaign appearances, tells me that she simply ‘commands attention in a superstar way. Few people have this true natural glamour.’

In my career as a fashion magazine staffer, I’ve experienced the power of Hurley’s star wattage first-hand. Perhaps the most memorable instance was the cover of the millennium collectors’ issue of Elle magazine in November 1999, for which she wore a crystal-bedecked Versace vest and white jeans (thereby anointing her status as the very patron saint of the divisive denim item).

‘Well, I had a fashion moment celebrating the millennium,’ she recalls. ‘Hugh and I were on Valentino’s boat for the millennium celebrations… in the Caribbean with Valentino and Giancarlo [Giammetti], Claudia Schiffer – who was dating Tim Jefferies at the time – and a fabulous group of people… It was a fabulous time. I think your mid-30s tend to be a very good time. You’re not quite as scared; I guess I’d sort of hit my stride.’

In fact the new millennium was to usher in a very different chapter in her life. Her 13-year romantic partnership with Grant ended in May 2000 and she began a relationship with American businessman Steve Bing, Damian’s biological father (Bing, who died by suicide in 2020, initially denied paternity, though it was later proved by DNA test).

Did motherhood change her? ‘Immensely, because it meant that somebody else was always put first. So often I think in life you’re frequently putting other people first, your parents or your siblings or your friends, or whoever needs you. But when there’s a child, there’s absolutely no doubt about it that they’re going to be first and in some ways that’s quite liberating, because putting someone else ahead of you takes a bit of pressure off yourself as well.

‘Becoming a parent changes you in so many ways. I mean, you’re always scared for your kids on some level. As they’re growing up those fears change in some ways. But you worry for their safety constantly, you worry for their happiness, you worry for their mental health, you worry about everything… But I’m quite a worrier, anyway, so that does tap in a little bit.’

Today, the pair are incredibly close. Now 22, Damian evidently shares not just his mother’s penchant for donning a pair of leather trousers, but her ferocious work ethic (‘Oh yes, we’ll both work 23 hours a day’). Of their decision to start working together professionally, she says ‘it seemed like a very natural progression of the relationship we’d had. Being a single mother of a single child has meant by default that we have spent quite a great deal of time together, even though he was at boarding school for 10 years.’

Something changed in lockdown, she admits, because they were home together for an extended period, ‘and it was during that time he really started writing’. Though she says the film-making bug goes back to much earlier in his childhood, after Hurley gave Damian his first camera when he was eight years old.

‘He sort of chased me around making his baby films, all the way until his mid-teens, which we cut on to DVDs and they are hysterical… There’s me and my friends, Hugh’s in them, my ex Shane [Warne] is in many of them, Shane’s kids, all our cousins, nephews, nieces are in these baby films. And I’d always promised him that when he finally got to do his first feature I would be in it.’

Hearing her mention Shane Warne, who died in 2022, prompts me to ask if the losses that she and Damian have experienced have made their bond even tighter. ‘We have suffered loss,’ she replies soberly. ‘And interestingly, this movie [Strictly Confidential] sort of pulls on those feelings of loss quite a lot – and in a lot of Damian’s work I do see that. Yes, it’s a bond… It was appalling losing Shane; it was a terrible thing. And it’s a sadness, you know, that stays with you a long time.

‘I know as we get older we’re going to experience more and more loss, but Damian as a young man has experienced probably more than most and I think it does affect you. I think it affects his writing and it does affect him as an artist.’

Having hit a poignant pause, we reroute our conversation back to fashion (after all, there is her yawning suitcase upstairs waiting to be filled). She admits she is less ‘cavalier’ than she was in her youth about throwing things together and just knowing ‘they will look great’. ‘Now I sort of plan it out a little bit more. You know, if I’m doing TV and I’ve got to sit in a chair, I don’t want the camera up my crotch.’

She has also lost tolerance for feeling uncomfortable. ‘Back in the day I would suffer all night with things digging in. I mean there were many times when I’d get home and there’d be blood from boning digging in or waistbands garroting me. I can’t do that any more. I won’t do that any more… If I’m trying to sell something, I don’t want to be thinking about something digging in at the same time.’

She tore ligaments in her left ankle on set in the Caribbean in 2021. ‘I couldn’t wear shoes with a heel for a year. Even now, I shouldn’t be wearing heels… Interestingly, I found that when I couldn’t put a heel on, that affected the way I dress and wanted to dress, because I’ve ruined my feet, you know, by 30 years prancing around in heels, which is a stupid thing to do… I don’t wear heels in the daytime now and actually it is so much nicer, it’s so much more comfortable. I can walk for miles – it’s great! So in fact although my injury was a hideous one, I really think it changed my life – because I am much more mobile during the day, when I’m not towering in shoes. What a stupid thing to do for years!’

So how does she dress for a day around the house? ‘I do wear a lot of athleisure and Ugg boots – I do! And I have these wonderful things from Uniqlo when it’s a bit nippy.’ (At this juncture, our interview gets slightly derailed as Hurley and I jointly extol the merits of a thermal underlayer; and she shows me that she is wearing a long-sleeved Uniqlo HeatTech under her cashmere roll neck.) ‘I keep my HeatTech on the entire time and I love it. I tend to wear it and turn the heating down, because it’s bad to have dry heat around your face.’

All said, when it comes to stepping into the spotlight, she still loves to put on a showstopper. So what exactly is she going to wear on her US publicity tour? ‘I’ve got some beautiful pieces from Nina Morris [a brand she discovered on Instagram] that are so pretty, absolutely glorious tailoring. I’m going to take that with me. I’m taking a little bit of Versace, also pieces from the Australian designer Rebecca Vallance; I really like finding things that other people aren’t always wearing. I’m also taking a Michael Costello dress… not so typical things, but I think they’re quite nice and sexy.’

While her days of boned corsets and merciless waistlines might be behind her, a typical Hurley red-carpet silhouette is still very va-va-voom by most people’s standards. I wonder how she feels about all the ‘Liz has found the fountain of youth at 58’-type headlines that accompany her red-carpet shots (and, of course, the bikini pictures she posts online to promote Elizabeth Hurley Beach).

She squints at me before answering, although whether this indicates discomfort with the question or her desire not to seem disingenuous I can’t quite be sure. ‘Well, there is such an obsession with men and women who hold up better than others. I mean, it’s kind of pretty insulting I think to people who maybe aren’t being put in the camp of, “Wow, they’re holding up well.” None of us really know why it works better for some people,’ she says with a shrug.

She has a no-nonsense approach to healthy eating. ‘My tastes are pretty simple – I don’t drink weird green juices or anything like that,’ she says. ‘I’ve always watched what I eat, since for ever. I’ve never wanted to eat processed food. Right back to my teens, I’ve always looked at the labels on food.’ Although she admits she ‘didn’t really know the difference between ultra-processed food and processed food until quite recently’ (like most of us, then).

But now, being enlightened, she says she has given up things like pre-packaged sandwiches, which often contain ultra-processed ingredients. ‘I cut all that out over a year ago… I just eat what I would say is very normal, which could be roast chicken, mashed potatoes and a couple of different vegetables. It’s definitely not anything new-fangled or weird.’

Her take on exercise is similarly unfaddy and, dare I say it, old-fashioned. ‘I don’t go to the gym, but I’m very active… I don’t really sit still very much. We have a rule in our house that no one’s allowed to put the TV on till 6pm, so nobody sits around until leading up to supper,’ she says. ‘But I do a lot of gardening… that’s quite bendy-downy, picking stuff up!’

She is so very British about her regimen. But, as she is at pains to point out, she absolutely does make an effort: ‘I work for a cosmetic company, I work for fashion companies, I have my own fashion company, I’m in high definition on massive cinema screens. So it’s my business to make more effort… of course I do, it’s my bread and butter.’

So, when she is not jet-setting to promote her son’s movie, or getting her squats in by dint of weeding the borders, how does she chill out? ‘My favourite thing in the world to do is to just lie around with my friends and have a laugh. I don’t particularly want to go out to restaurants any more, and I certainly don’t want to go to clubs. Spending time with my siblings and my really close friends, male and female, that is what really nourishes my soul.’

She is still close to Hugh Grant, 63, who married Anna Eberstein in 2018: ‘We’re very good friends. He’s married. He’s got five children. His career is amazing,’ she says, smiling. All of the above means they don’t see each other so often these days. ‘But I always know what he’s doing and he knows what I’m doing. We’ll be best friends for ever, but he’s got young kids, so he’s busy.’ And is she dating right now? ‘I am dating at the moment. But that is something that I’m still keeping private.’

Frankly, I could not feel more buoyed by an hour’s conversation with Hurley. And who knows, if she didn’t have that suitcase to pack, perhaps we could have jawed on longer, about the opportunity of TV streamers for female actors and showrunners, her love of Yellowstone (‘There’s one half-season to drop and I’m gagging for it’), and her excitement about producing Damian’s next feature film. ‘He’s written another fantastic script. I won’t be in it, but I’m going to produce it for him this year. We’re just putting it together right now.’

As we say our goodbyes, something she said about her hopes for Damian’s first movie keeps ringing in my ears: ‘I want that to do better than I’ve wanted anything of my own to do well.’

What a thing to have Elizabeth Hurley at your back: the ultimate stealth show-business powerhouse… with or without a Versace safety-pin dress.

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