Elizabeth Hurley can't walk the streets without causing a mini riot.
One of the world's most beautiful women, slowly becoming a
major player in Hollywood, a leading model and a movie star, she's the girl with
everything. She's even co-owner of a movie
production company.
And yet, this girl with everything goes out with a guy who looks like..."I think Hugh
looks like a chimp," Liz admits, laughing.
"His ears are small and too high on his head and it gives him a very simian look.
It's humiliating, but true."
Even the name of her and Hugh Grant's production company, Simian, means ape-like.
Despite the fact that Hugh has often portrayed a very English kind of handsome hero on
screen, and Liz's glamour lit up Austin
Powers: International Man Of Mystery, the two aren't planning to get together on screen.
Least of all for a bit of sexy monkey
business, Liz Hurley reveals.
"We'd love to do a film together, but it's not our number one priority." says
the 33-year-old. "I don't think audiences want to
see real-life couples in romantic films.It's sexier to have love scenes between strangers.
Anyway, I'd never want to inflict that
upon the public."
Sex scenes or not, Liz Hurley 's presence prompts pandemonium in public places,
particularly in America. She might be eating
out, or simply enjoying the Hollywood air, when she's mobbed by males.
Unfortunately, the ga-ga guys at the heart of this Liz Hurley -burly aren't quite as hunky
as Liz Hurley would like. "I've become
the sex symbol of choice - with boys of six!" she reveals with a giggle.
"It's quite strange. I sometimes have even four-year-old boys literally flinging
themselves at me like little Exocet missiles when
I'm in restaurants. They're cute and I like them but it's weird though.
"It's all to do with Austin Powers, of course," says Liz Hurley. "They want
me in that silver mini skirt." Liz Hurley expects to
continue as the object of affection to the pre-pubescent crowd in her latest role - as a
sexy TV reporter in an effects-strewn
remake of the old American TV series, My Favourite Martian, out next month. "It's
very much a fabulous kids' movie," Liz
Hurley smiles. "At a private screening the children adored it. the sillier you are,
the more you fall over, the more they love you."
My Favourite Martian, while known to every fortysomething earthling in the US, was
completely unknown to Liz Hurley. "The
TV show wasn't shown in England, so I didn't have the faintest idea what it was when I was
offered the role. But they sent me
some episodes which I loved."
Liz Hurley plays one of those awful arrogant, TV reporters (opposite Christopher Lloyd,
Jeff Daniels and Daryl Hannah) who
has landed her job only because her daddy owns the TV station.
"The role gave me a chance to avenge myself on all the irritating TV journalists I've
come across in my career. I took all their
worst characteristics and put them into the person I play. "They're not all
obnoxious, of course - but I've met my share of them.
It was fun to parody them for a while."
Liz Hurley isn't bothered that she won't be Austin's main squeeze in the sequel, the
shockingly titled Austin Powers: The Spy
Who Sh***ed Me.
"Austin wants to be James Bond and have a new girl every time - that's naughty though
fair enough. But it's my favourite film
title ever.
"When the first Austin Powers movie came out nobody in America knew what s**g meant.
I don't think they do even now.
They think it means necking. I tell people over there that it's a really strong
four-letter word you wouldn't say in front of your
grandma in England unless you wanted a clip round the ear."
When asked about her future with long-time boyfriend Hugh Grant, 38, Liz Hurley says
cagily: "I don't think I'm ready to be a
mother - I'm not that responsible. But I'm becoming more grown-up."
Liz Hurley enjoys wearing the producer's hat when it comes to working with the man she
lives with. She was boss on Hugh
Grant 's medical thriller Extreme Measures and has produced Mickey Blue-eyes, a mob comedy
starring Hugh Grant and
Jeanne Tripplehorn, with James Caan playing a Mafia godfather.
"I like to be in control," she admits. "I'm quite a bossy lady. But
producing is a nightmare. it makes a lot of people nervous,
particularly when they realise the producer's boyfriend is the star of the film.
"I've been producing Mickey-Blue eyes for two years. You work 19 hours a day. It's an
awful amount of pressure. At least
when you're in front of the camera you go in, do your bit and get paid well. You don't
have to think for yourself. And on
Mickey it was nice for Hugh to feel somebody was supporting him. We feel foreign making a
film in Hollywood."