The sexiest part of a woman’s body, according to the actress, model, mogulette
and all-round 100% British sexport Elizabeth Hurley, is . . . “her back”,
she says, her voice one long, cool drink of cream. “I just love
it. If I’m at a party and I see an amazing backless dress, it’s beautiful.
Most women have pretty good backs, I think. It’s a good way to be sexy: a
dress with no back.”
After all, when it comes to sexy, there’s nobody who knows it better than Liz.
The woman who has built a career out of sensuous outfits – the plunging
Versace safety-pin dress, the knicker-revealing scarlet show-stopper she
wore to a country wedding, the 6in fetish footwear for the cover of Pop
magazine – is, to this day, polished, pert, voluptuous and, almost
certainly, over and above that stupendously banging body, very naughty.
(“Bed?” she hoots at one point, leaning back with a smile. “I don’t wear
anything!”) Even this morning, straight off the redeye from New York and
still wearing yesterday’s make-up (“Estée Lauder party, I’m afraid to say”),
she manages to look like a hot head girl in a bomber jacket, a stripy top,
sky-high Dolce & Gabbana snakeskin sandals and tight jeans that more
than once fetchingly reveal a flash of lacy turquoise thong.
“Well, actually, I’m pretty scruffy today,” she says with a shrug, pushing
back a lock of hair and ordering a nonfat cappuccino (“Make sure they get it
right – you have to tell them about five times”) from a sofa in the master
suite of No 11 Cadogan Gardens in Chelsea. “I simply need to make much more
effort,” she continues, earnestly furrowing her delicate brow, as if reading
her report card. Not unlike a St Trinian’s schoolgirl: sweetly conservative
and well-mannered, but probably game for a snog later on. (She replied to
one journalist, who revealed to her that they’d snogged back in the 1980s,
“We snogged? How fantastic! Did we have sex? Did we?” They didn’t.)
But back to clothes. “I wear jeans seven days a week,” she continues in that
luscious posh accent, all pearly white, straight teeth – if the overnight
flight reading “really violent American thrillers” has exhausted her, she’s
too polite to show it. “I own tons of them” – she has, in the past,
confessed to 30 white pairs alone – “I mean, tons. I’m
happiest in jeans and a T-shirt, unless I’ve put on a bit of weight, then
I’ll go to dresses immediately. I’m not really as stylish as I should be.”
She does, however, “always wear high heels; I don’t have any flat shoes. But
I never go shopping. I mean, I went shopping for five minutes yesterday in
New York, but I don’t have any spare time. I’d love to go shopping”.
Good thing she has plenty of bikinis, then. “I’ve got thousands,” she says.
“Obviouslah. Although, whenever I go on holiday, I never seem to have any.”
She has been doing bikinis under her own name, Elizabeth Hurley Beach, for
three years now; and this summer, she is diversifying with a diffusion line
for Mango. Unsurprisingly, the idea for the collaboration arose at a party.
“I met the Mangos at Valentino’s big party last summer,” she purrs. “They
said they loved my beachwear, so I drew [some designs] very badly. We did
some fittings in Barcelona, then they sent a whole team to my house in the
country for a ‘bikini fit’, which is the most extraordinary thing. When I
first started my company, Arun [her financier husband, whom she married last
year] came with me to a big swimwear factory near Rimini. I was so
embarrassed: in walked the 6ft model in a nude thong, so poor Arun was like
. . . whoosh, bloody hell! And then you have to fit the bikini, which means”
– she stands up – “you’re probably on your knees and you’re pinning the
crotch, fitting the crotch, saying, ‘Shall we do that? This? A bit more
coverage on the bottom?’ I was so embarrassed, touching this girl. I used to
go hot and cold, but now it’s part of the job.”
Hurley herself is apparently looking forward to the moment she never has to
pose in a bikini again (although one fashion editor reports, “She is very
confident in her body – I turned around and suddenly she was naked”).
“Shooting bikinis is now my life, which, as you can imagine, is unmitigated
hell,” she says, in her golly-gosh diction, which is peppered with words
like “unpleasant-making” and “jolly”. “I can’t think of anything worse in
the world than another bikini shoot – and I’ve got two next month. It’s
unbearable, and I bring it all on myself. I’ve got nobody else to blame.
It’s literallah torture. If you get a photographer you don’t know, of
course, you think, ‘Oh God.’ But if you signed on for the gig, sadly, you
have to go and be jolly in a skimpy white bikini. So I now rely on nice
photographers, and a bit of retouching.”
Ah, yes, digital retouching. “I like a certain amount of retouching, like
anybody,” she admits cautiously. “We all like to get rid of spots and
shadows under our eyes. I’ve always been quite particular – I don’t like my
face to be retouched. Often, people will want to correct one’s face, and
with me, they always want to change my nose” – she squishes it – “and I’m
like, ‘No, no, no, I can’t look like that. I don’t mind if you want to make
me a bit thinner and a bit younger, but you can’t give me a different jaw or
eyebrows.’ But the vanity retouching – well, who wouldn’t?”
Hilariously, Hurley’s retouching habit extends to her holiday photos. “I don’t
have professional Photoshop, just the one that comes with your camera,” she
says. “Every time I download my holiday snaps” – she lowers her voice for
effect – “I always go over them. Just the red eye and colour enhancement. I
don’t do any slimming, because you need a silly programme, but the colour
enhancing is heaven.”
For all her worries about her physical appearance – she’s deliciously prudish
in her speech, primly using words such as “bust” and “bottom” where fellow
sloanes Trinny and Susannah might favour more direct terminology – Hurley
remains very tidy. Her legs are toned alabaster; her stomach flat. She is
elegantly vague about the amount of exercise she does. “I don’t go to the
gym, but I intend to,” she says cutely, before explaining that one of her
wedding presents, a Power Plate, is still in its box at home in
Gloucestershire, but an instructor is coming round to show her how to use it
vah, vah soon.
“The biggest change at 40 is that you can’t stay vah slim with yoga, Pilates
or stretching alone,” she says. “Previously, I didn’t do much more – if
that. Over 40, you have to do something aerobic, unless you don’t eat much,
but I eat lots.” A treat, for the record, is something “salty and meaty – a
bacon and sausage sandwich”, she trills. “Cauliflower cheese. Cottage pie.
Baby food, really. I don’t have it very often. But [physically] there’s no
comparison with six years ago – I’m much heavier now. Before Damian [her
six-year-old son with Hollywood billionaire Steve Bing] I chain-smoked,
which is an appetite suppressant. Now, if I put on any weight, it looks
different. Because you’ve been big, and your skin has stretched, you have to
watch it. And you have to sleep more. I don’t get anything like enough.”
Quite. Hurley is, after all, a good, old-fashioned workaholic. The daughter of
a schoolteacher and an army major, she grew up in Basingstoke and arrived in
London in her late teens as a dancer. (Back home, she had been an unlikely
member of a troupe called the Vestal Virgins.)
“I am, by nature, a workaholic. I have to fight the urge,” says Hurley, who
has removed all WiFi transmitters from her home, a farm in Gloucestershire,
and put them in the stable block. (An acquaintance reports: “She’s bloody
hard-working – and never does or says anything that doesn’t benefit the
business.”) She’s moving to the country full-time “today”, she
says, to concentrate more on her burgeoning organic-food business (yes,
that, too). “I feel exactly the same on the farm,” she says, “but my stress
comes from not being entirely confident I can run my company from there. My
plan is to spend one night a week here, with two three-quarter days either
side of it.” She worked flat out to set up her business – often, they say,
controlling stock on the computer herself – but it was nothing like movie
producing. “That was a very intense time for Hugh [Grant] and me. We were
everywhere. That was a huge amount of work. I rarely work at weekends now –
it has to be a big deal – and I rarely work at night.”
Grant, her former boyfriend of 13 years, is still a close friend. “I saw him
about three minutes ago. He is still very much involved in my life – he’s
Damian’s godfather. I think he’s coming to stay with us this weekend, in
fact,” she says. “He gets on very well with Arun” – who, incidentally,
Damian calls “Dad”, even though he is fully aware that he is not is his
biological father. “Hugh’s someone I trust enormously. I still very much use
him as my sounding board: it’s important to work with someone who you’re not
worried about sounding like a prat in front of. We’re very lucky we have
that – and I’m incredibly lucky he gets on well with my husband.”
She doesn’t, however, advise him on his relationships. “We don’t do love life
really – we just do business. I’m always trying to persuade Hugh to work –
do a movie, do a movie, say yes. I just love people to be busy: I think
everyone needs to be busy.”
