Elizabeth Hurley: Elizabeth's Reign

I ask her to comment on some of the lively press clippings, specifically one claiming that she showed up at this year's Cannes Film Festival with white see-through pants that exposed her lack of underwear. "What can I say?" she says. "There are very few things that annoy me anymore, but this happens to be one of them. For almost two years after my dad died, I stopped reading or listening to all this stuff, because none of it seemed important anymore. Everything pales next to losing someone like that. I found I was putting way too much wasted energy into idiotic things. Now I'll be reading the paper and suddenly there will be this bit cut out and I'll ask my assistants, 'What did you cut out?' And they'll say, 'You don't want to know.' They keep a file in a locked cabinet in my office in England. Just occasionally, if I'm still in there at midnight or something, I'll look at that locked cabinet and think, 'Should I?' Recently I got very naughty and started reading and listening to this rubbish again. I wish I hadn't."

Was this rubbish perhaps about the post-wedding party of her best friend, millionaire playboy Henry Dent-Brocklehurst? Tabloid coverage of that event noted, among other things, that Hurley was wearing a red slit dress that left her leopard panties exposed. Hurley jumps to her own defense. "I asked every single person at that party, 'Did you see anything?' and they said, 'Absolutely not!' I'm forced to conclude that someone was lying on the floor taking a picture from below. What's annoying about the tabloid gossip is that I'm sure people who don't know me must think I'm a complete idiot."

Ah, but doesn't she take any credit for being someone who knows how to maximize her entrances and exits? At this she snaps back with a dazzling, knowing grin, "I don't have to do that by showing my underwear. This is all a load of rubbish. It's like being at school and hearing two girls being mean about you in the bathroom. Only it's an entire nation saying something which is almost always untrue, almost always exaggerated, and with a horribly vicious slant."

Well, then, let's go for broke here: what about the rumors that Hurley and Dent-Brocklehurst have had a secret love affair? "Absolute rubbish," she declares. "Henry has been my best friend for years. I adore him. Aside from Hugh and Katie, my sister, Henry is my biggest confidant in the world. We've never fancied each other even remotely. It wouldn't occur to me to have sex with Henry. Absolutely not." And the rumors of a boyfriend she purportedly sees in L.A.? At this, Hurley looks titillated. "That's an actual rumor?" she asks. "Absolutely fascinating. Tell me more." She leans forward as I recite all the names and locations involved, and she hangs on every detail. At the end, she looks me in the eye and declares: "On my father's grave, I deny that." Then, tossing back her head and laughing, she asks, good-naturedly, "Got any more rumors? Like 'I heard about you and your brother?'" More quietly, she says, "Really, having been the brunt of gossip, I find it less fun now. Even when it's about other people."

Hurley well knows that all this gossip comes with the territory, but she knows where this territory begins and ends as far as she's concerned. She's filed strategic lawsuits and she's won a number of them. She and Grant have used the reward money to fund an entire island preserve for nearly 30 chimps that have been either abandoned by irresponsible owners or abused by circuses and zoos, which, Hurley informs me, do things like amputate the animals' toes so that they can wear roller skates and addict them to heroin so that they don't bite. "My mother has always loved chimps and so do I," says Hurley. "On the island, they won't be as cute and cuddly, they'll revert to more instinctual behavior, but that's how it should be." And that, in case anyone's wondering, is why Hurley and Grant's company is named Simian Films.

Even less fun than gossip is another problem celebrity has brought on. In her office there's also a file labeled, simply, "Lunatics." "That's so if I'm ever found with a knife in my back, the girls can give the police this file to check out straightaway," she says drolly. "There's this one man who is absolutely obsessed with writing to me. He always starts his letters in a normal way, like, 'Dear Miss Hurley, I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I watched Christabel in 1988' and so on. Then he goes into the graphic stuff, like, 'Oh, and by the way, I've just wet myself and there's wee soaking through my pants and there's wee on my bed and there's wee down there.' But he always ends with, 'Anyway, nice talking to you. Yours sincerely.' He writes me often with his urinary tract problem."

I've been in Hurley's hotel room for hours by now and it's time to conclude our conversation, but this isn't quite the note to end on. I opt for a mood of candor and I admit to Hurley that for the longest time I thought she was a model who only started making movies recently, an error many Americans make. I ask her if she finds this common misconception about her irritating.

"The whole thing with modeling for Estee Lauder--no one could have a better, nicer modeling job--happened with absolutely no effort on my part," she says. "I'd never thought or dreamed about modeling. But in a large measure modeling has eclipsed and overtaken everything for which I've been working and slaving for so long. It just sort of engulfs it and sweeps it away. And now I have to deal with that, which is so strange." As I'm picking up my things and trying to figure out whether that's Hurley's English way of saying, yes, she's irritated, she polishes off a tube of Smarties and pops off the plastic stopper. At the door, she cocks the tube to one eye, peers at me as if through a telescope and says, "Goodbye, Baby!" Guess she's not that irritated.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Antonio Banderas for the August '98 issue of Movieline

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