Elizabeth Hurley: Elizabeth's Reign

Now that we're talking Hurley and Hugh, we might as well deal with the embarrassing episode of Grant's 1995 arrest. Hurley gained major points at the time for taking the high road when Hugh had taken a low one. She didn't leave him, and she didn't trash him in public. What motivated her loyalty? "I don't think you ever do anything in life, ultimately, for somebody else to condone or condemn," she says carefully. "When you're under scrutiny, it's often difficult to react how you would normally react. You have every columnist, TV commentator and goodness knows who else watching. It can be very difficult to actually remember what you're thinking inside." Did she talk with Grant about what happened and why? "If you know what something is--something unsaid, but understood--I've never seen the point in necessarily having to discuss that," she says.

They never discussed the topic? Hurley narrows her eyes. "Since my father died, [I've learned that] things that seem very, very important often mean nothing. And things you don't talk a lot about can mean more than anything in the world. I didn't have to talk to my mom and sister about our grief and pain about my dad. I've never felt I needed to wear my heart on my sleeve."

This may just be Englishness, but Hurley's reticence about how she and Grant managed their relationship in the wake of his indiscretion left the field open for endless speculation about what agreements they might have come to. There was talk, for example, that they might have resigned themselves to a purely business-oriented union disguised for practical reasons by surface romance. "Nobody ever really knows what goes on behind others' closed doors," Hurley remarks quietly at the suggestion. "It's silly for anyone to speculate or make assumptions on what goes on between us or anybody else, because they know nothing, really. Which is probably as it should be."

Meaning? "Meaning, whenever I've been tempted to dig beneath the surface with any of my friends, I have deeply regretted it. I actually don't want to know. What someone presents to the outside world is, frankly, what you should accept, because it's normally the most attractive thing. What you think you know, even about your closest friends? Bullshit. We're all freaks in a way."

Whatever the real dynamic between Grant and Hurley, they have worked it out together for 11 years now. What does Hurley think is the key to their compatibility? The actress likes this question and leans forward to answer, "It's quite tricky. People who don't know us might say that I make him look less stuffy, but it's not true. They'd probably say that he makes me ..." Suddenly Hurley has taken herself to her own dead end. "You know, I don't know," she concludes, sounding genuinely baffled.

Perhaps it all comes down to the mundane compromises of daily life? "Hugh is very tidy and I'm pathologically untidy," she confides. "I've always been that way. My whole family's messy, but with me, it's almost out of control. I'm physically incapable of picking up my clothes and I cannot put them away at night--I have to throw them on the floor. I can pick them up the next day, of course, but if somebody--well, when Hugh tells me to pick them up at night, it gives me a stomachache. I'm like, 'Look, if my bathroom's a mess, don't go in it.' We've found a way to deal with it, though. We don't share a bathroom and we have completely separate closets." On an even more basic level, is she still wowed by his looks after all this time? She smiles slowly, and says, "I'm not over it. I still see Hugh's beauty. All the time."

The long period of time Hurley and Grant have spent together naturally brings us to the issue of why they've never married. "Marrying someone is very tricky when you've been together so long," she remarks. "Would anyone do it? You're not marrying someone in the flash of passion and romance after 11 years. It's not exactly how storybooks go, you know? If we decided to have children, that would be different. Illegitimate children are not... well, I don't think my dad would have liked it."

Should famous, busy, rich people like actors have children? Hurley laughs, "No, they should probably be castrated. I don't go mad about babies, but I do like children--well-behaved children, that is. And we'd someday like to have them. Because I didn't grow up in a family with a lot of money, I'm more worried about having children growing up with a lot of money than with fame. I don't think I'd be where I am if I'd had a trust fund or cars bought for me. Everyone I know who's inherited money and had things paid for is around the bend, as far as I can see.

"I was very fortunate, and I didn't appreciate it until quite a lot later on, to have a great upbringing," continues Hurley, who grew up with her brother and sister in a middle-class home in the London suburbs, with an army officer father and an elementary schoolteacher mother. "Day after day, I hear horror stories about other people's families, but I just didn't have that. I now see what a gift it was to have been given a good base, to have had people who would genuinely sacrifice anything for me. Unconditional love makes the difference."

For someone with as proper an upbringing as Hurley's, the tabloid image she sees created of her life would have to be unsettling.

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