{"id":1987996,"date":"2025-08-30T05:02:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T05:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1987996"},"modified":"2025-08-30T05:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T05:02:59","slug":"i-spent-a-long-confusing-week-watching-every-single-elizabeth-hurley-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/i-spent-a-long-confusing-week-watching-every-single-elizabeth-hurley-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"I spent a long, confusing week watching every single Elizabeth Hurley movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"IndependentCulture\"<\/div>\n
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Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email<\/h3>\n

Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter <\/h3>\n

Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter <\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\"IndependentCulture\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A<\/span> few weeks ago, a colleague asked me to explain Elizabeth Hurley. This was a question from someone younger, which made it a trickier task than most. Well, I said, she\u2019s Hugh Grant\u2019s ex<\/a> \u2013 before I realised that\u2019s probably a bit demeaning as a descriptor. She\u2019s an actor, too, I added. Or was an actor. I suppose she still is \u2013 perhaps they remembered all those headlines last year about her son directing her in a saucy thriller<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I could have brought up Austin Powers and Bedazzled. Or that safety pin dress<\/a>. Or the fact that she\u2019s so outrageously posh that when her mouth opens, the crown jewels seem to fly out. Instead, I admitted that I couldn\u2019t adequately explain Elizabeth Hurley. Over the course of her 30 years of fame, Hurley\u2019s most important role has simply been being Elizabeth Hurley, plummy super-goddess seamlessly transplanted into every facet of the celebrity ecosystem. This, my by-now-weary colleague told me, didn\u2019t exactly help.<\/p>\n

The question kept nagging at me. Who is Elizabeth Hurley? Is she just bikini selfies and forgettable cinema? Brexit voting and underwear entrepreneurialism? Is she always Elizabeth Hurley, even when she\u2019s playing someone else? Her new Channel 4 reality show makes a good case for that theory. The Inheritance is more or less The Traitors with Elizabeth Hurley, the star appearing in campy, occasionally coffin-bound cameos as a woman known only as The Deceased, whose \u201cvast fortune\u201d is fought over by 13 contestants. She\u2019s dead, but she\u2019s also still Elizabeth Hurley \u2013 complete with a tasteful smoky eye, bizarre accent, and glowy decolletage at the ready.<\/p>\n

To properly unravel the mystery of Elizabeth Hurley, I decided to go right back to the beginning of her long career, assuming that to truly understand her is to witness her from the ground up. This meant watching all 28 of her feature films in rapid succession \u2013 films being the one true constant across a career that has spun into wildly erratic corners. By the end of this mad journey, I\u2019d watched Hurley hijack a plane, murder Patsy Kensit, fire bullets from her nipples, and smoke crack cocaine in two entirely different movies. I grew to adore her. My mind may have turned to soup along the way.<\/p>\n

Day one: Euro-puddings and gratuitous nudity<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Hurley<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hurley alongside Patsy Kensit and Jurgen Prochnow in \u2018Kill Cruise\u2019 (Everett\/Shutterstock)<\/span><\/div>\n

Hurley and Hugh Grant met on the set of a 1988 costume drama called Rowing with the Wind, one of a number of obscure films the pair made at the start of their careers in inexplicable places on the continent. Grant has called this his \u201cEuro-pudding\u201d phase. I find Rowing with the Wind on YouTube, Grant playing Lord Byron and Hurley the flouncing ninny who\u2019s in love with him. They\u2019re both quite bad in it, as if they\u2019re making this for the free holiday and know that not a living soul will ever watch it. (I should also mention Aria, a bizarre 1987 movie that served as Hurley\u2019s proper debut \u2013 she pops up for five minutes lip-syncing to an operetta and showing her breasts. Madness!)<\/p>\n

My journey continues with two more Hurley Euro-puddings. One, The Long Winter, I can only find on an obscure Russian website with Spanish dubbing all over it. The other is an absolute howler titled Kill Cruise, in which Hurley and Pasty Kensit play a pair of loud northerners flapping about an unnamed European city, with Hurley at one point performing an unbearably long striptease for a crowd of baying locals. \u201cBugger me, you were somethin\u2019 else takin\u2019 all your clothes off,\u201d Kensit\u2019s character exclaims soon after. The pair get on a boat with a man they become convinced is a serial killer, only for Hurley to reveal herself to be the one who\u2019s actually insane. I wish I could say Kill Cruise is as fun as it sounds, but alas.<\/p>\n

Day two: terrifying nightmares and Toby Young<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Hurley<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hurley and Craig Fairbrass in \u2018Beyond Bedlam\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/span><\/div>\n

Now we\u2019re talking. I begin my second day of Hurleyfest with a rewatch of Passenger 57, the 1992 film that marked Hurley\u2019s American debut. She plays a flight attendant and terrorist on a plane hijacked by Bruce Payne \u2013 who is unaware that undercover fed Wesley Snipes is also on board and ready to punch people. This is fun stuff, and Hurley matches its slightly mad tempo \u2013 seeing her wield a big gun and get knocked about near the sandwich cart is a hoot.<\/p>\n

Next, I suffer through Beyond Bedlam, a risible 1994 horror in which Keith Allen haunts Hurley\u2019s nightmares. While it\u2019s on, I google what Hurley was up to around this time: flitting between London and Los Angeles, neither she nor Grant has yet made it, and are hanging out with Old Etonians and Toby Young at ritzy Hollywood parties. I briefly ponder whether I\u2019d rather attend one of those events or set myself on fire. I choose the flames.<\/p>\n

I also do a bit of a deep dive into Hurley\u2019s poshness, which is all a bit confected: much like Grant, she was raised middle class, her cut-glass, jolly-hockey-sticks accent a put-on that sort of stuck. Fascinating!<\/p>\n

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Day three: an inexplicable amount of cocaine<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Ice<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ice Cube and Hurley in \u2018Dangerous Ground\u2019 (Everett\/Shutterstock)<\/span><\/div>\n

Things changed for both Hurley and Grant around this time. The Versace safety pin dress Hurley wore to the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere sent her career stratospheric, and she was quickly snapped up to be the face of Est\u00e9e Lauder. This also coincided with the release of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a very big British flop in which she plays a posh yuppie addicted to crack cocaine. It\u2019s more ludicrous than explicitly awful, and Hurley tries her best to bring a touch of authenticity to the role (however hopeless). I then watch Dangerous Ground, a right odd duck of a film, in which Hurley plays a South African pole dancer who romances Ice Cube and who is also addicted to crack cocaine. I actually like her in this film \u2013 she\u2019s nicely vulnerable and human in a movie that can\u2019t decide whether it wants to be a serious drama about post-apartheid Johannesburg or a bullet-ridden actioner.<\/p>\n

I dig out an old issue of Empire magazine from 1996 \u2013 published shortly after Grant had been arrested for his infamous dalliance with a sex worker, which only furthered his and, by proxy, Hurley\u2019s notoriety. In it, she spoke about her unusual actor-turned-model-turned-professional-girlfriend-of status, and how disappointed she was by her film career. \u201cSo often things I\u2019ve done have really added up to nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cI just have to turn that around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, there was Austin Powers in the pipeline, with Hurley lovely and deadpan as the catsuit-clad love interest for Mike Myers\u2019s toothy secret agent. This is, at least in my household, a comedy classic. Underrated is another Hurley film from this period, the addiction drama Permanent Midnight. She plays a British TV executive in Los Angeles who marries Ben Stiller\u2019s druggie writer for a green card. She\u2019s quite lovely in it \u2013 one of the few real innocents in a city plagued by users. She\u2019s great in this mode, slightly de-glammed and wholesome. It\u2019s unfortunate she wasn\u2019t allowed to do it more.<\/p>\n

Day four: monkey business<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Sean<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sean Penn and Hurley in \u2018The Weight of Water\u2019 (Moviestore\/Shutterstock)<\/span><\/div>\n

I skim through her cameos in the Ron Howard flop EDtv (think The Truman Show but stupid) and the inexplicably randy Disney kids\u2019 comedy My Favourite Martian, while continuing to read her press through the years. It turns out that Hurley loves primates. \u201cWhenever I\u2019ve sued a newspaper, I\u2019ve never taken the money myself,\u201d she told Harper\u2019s Bazaar in 1996. \u201cI torment the editors by making them pay thousands of pounds to the Great Ape Escape in Dorset.\u201d I make a note to consult The Independent\u2019s lawyers before this piece is published, just for safety. Sorry to those apes.<\/p>\n

I then watch Hurley\u2019s cameo in Austin Powers 2, in which her character turns out to have been a cyborg all along, has her face ripped off, attempts to kill Austin and then explodes. It\u2019s incredibly funny. She really does have great comic timing. Then it\u2019s The Weight of Water, an inexplicably star-studded psychological thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow that absolutely no one remembers. It follows two plot strands, one in which Sarah Polley and the wonderful Katrin Cartlidge suffer under the patriarchy in 1873, the other in which Hurley, Sean Penn, Catherine McCormack and Josh Lucas research murders and play sexual mind games with one another on a boat in the present day. Hurley does naughty things with an ice cube while Penn salivates. This is an absolute corker of a terrible movie, but Hurley herself isn\u2019t half-bad. She doesn\u2019t ever disappear into roles, exactly, but that never did Sean Connery or Nicolas Cage any harm, did it?<\/p>\n

Day five: peaks and troughs<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Hurley<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hurley and Matthew Perry in \u2018Serving Sara\u2019 (Paramount\/Everett\/Shutterstock)<\/span><\/div>\n

Released shortly after Grant and Hurley announced their amicable split, Bedazzled remains the ultimate Elizabeth Hurley movie, for it asks little from her besides being suitably withering and looking sensational in a parade of fantastic outfits. She plays the Devil, who grants Brendan Fraser\u2019s loveless sadsack seven wishes. This was a big hit in 2000, and has aged like a fine wine \u2013 I remember disliking Bedazzled as a child, but upon rewatch find it to be plenty camp and fun, and specifically because Hurley throws herself so thoroughly into it. There\u2019s a touch of Joan Collins to her performance here (complimentary), and \u2013 let\u2019s call a spade a spade \u2013 surely no one has looked so good in a film this century?<\/p>\n

I skim through two bad Denis Leary romcoms Hurley was in next and focus my attention on Serving Sara, an interesting pit stop in her career as it is, to date, the last big American film she\u2019s made. Serving Sara was also the last big American film to be led by Matthew Perry. It\u2019s quite an unusual project as a result, as if you\u2019re watching two celebrities spinning through their last days as proper movie stars. (The brief presence of a young Amy Adams only adds to the lopsided feel here.) Hurley isn\u2019t very good in Serving Sara, in which she plays a trophy wife tangled up with the man who serves her divorce papers, but it\u2019s hardly her fault: this is a film in which the biggest comic set piece involves Perry sticking his arm into a cow\u2019s rectum. Even Meryl would struggle with that one.<\/p>\n

Hurley\u2019s better in Method, a 2004 thriller that ended up being her last film before a 10-year hiatus from acting. It\u2019s probably the most conceptually interesting Hurley film to date, too, as she\u2019s cast as a pampered, beautiful movie star of questionable talent, who causes trouble on the set of a movie in which she plays a legendary serial killer. There\u2019s a lot of salacious lore to this film, with its director making lots of wild allegations about Hurley\u2019s diva behaviour on set to the News of the World. \u201cWhen she told me rather grandly the first day of shooting not to direct her because she was \u2018a celebrity, not an actress\u2019, I really had nowhere to go,\u201d he claimed. I don\u2019t know whether this is accurate \u2013 Hurley only denied the more outlandish claims via her publicist at the time \u2013 but it\u2019s quite a sad quote if true, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Day six: oh dear<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Hurley,<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hurley, Kelsey Grammer and Billy Ray Cyrus on the poster artwork for \u2018Christmas in Paradise\u2019 (MSR Media)<\/span><\/div>\n

At this point, 18 films in, I\u2019m admittedly a bit tired of watching Elizabeth Hurley movies. But, nevertheless, I persist. I skim to her single scene in Made in Romania, a strange 2010 mockumentary actually inspired by the chaos behind the scenes of Method, then skip through 2014\u2019s Viktor, which is basically Taken if it starred a sweaty Gerard Depardieu. I put Father Christmas Is Back and An Elephant\u2019s Journey on in the background while I make soup, and am appreciative of her two-scene cameo in the throwaway romcom Then Came You.<\/p>\n

I follow this up with the Father Christmas Is Back sequel, Christmas in Paradise, which features numerous musical performances from Billy Ray Cyrus, who is currently Hurley\u2019s real-life beau. They have minimal chemistry, which might be because Cyrus has the screen presence of a bag of flour.<\/p>\n

Day seven: for the love of God, make it stop<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\"Hurley<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hurley and Pear Chiravara in \u2018Strictly Confidential\u2019 (Lionsgate)<\/span><\/div>\n

It is my seventh day of Elizabeth Hurley films, and I smell freedom on the horizon. I speed through an inexplicably expensive-looking horror film called Piper that\u2019s streaming on Prime (godawful), a third terrible Christmas film, and then the infamous beachfront erotic thriller Strictly Confidential. Damien Hurley, my new favourite actor\u2019s model-slash-filmmaker son, directed this one, which calls for his mum to indulge in lesbian love scenes and be beaten around the head. It\u2019s like an episode of Poirot crossed with a Jet2 advert. It is also, blissfully, the last entry in Hurley\u2019s filmography.<\/p>\n

The funny thing about this last two-day run of Hurley films, though, is that she\u2019s very \u201cElizabeth Hurley\u201d in them. She tends to have the exact same, immaculately coiffed haircut, the same uber-glam wraparound dresses. At one point in Strictly Confidential she\u2019s all over-glossed lips and tousled hair while laid up in a hospital bed. Hurley had become more of a brand than an actor during this time \u2013 launching an underwear line and hosting the reality show Project Catwalk (she was reportedly dropped after the first series for being \u201ctoo wooden\u201d, which is hilarious) \u2013 and you can see that reflected on screen. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call any of what she\u2019s doing in these films \u201cgood acting\u201d, but \u2013 for better and worse \u2013 you can tell she\u2019s having fun, often playing into her haughty image rather than running away from it.<\/p>\n

Most of all, though, my journey across Hurley\u2019s film career has produced a series of undeniable truths: the camera loves her; her voice is so clipped and unusual that it loops back around from baffling to beguiling; she has, believe it or not, a bit more range than you might think. I don\u2019t think she has a Paddington 2-esque renaissance in her, meaning the same mid-life pivot into great, interesting performances that Grant has experienced, but I do think she probably warrants a second look as an actor. If only because it explains why she\u2019s lasted so long in the public eye, Elizabeth Hurley is, unequivocally, a star. And no one else has quite had the kind of career she\u2019s had. I\u2019m a man who\u2019s now spent nearly 2,500 minutes of his life watching the entirety of her filmography \u2013 just trust me on that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter A few weeks ago, a colleague asked me to explain Elizabeth Hurley. This was a question from someone younger, which made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1948653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Strictly-2025-BBC-loses-professional-competitor-for-new-series.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}