Life
Hurley and Grant in 1994. Fred Duval/FilmMagic/Getty
Liz Hurley’s secret? “Old-fashioned, uncomplicated star-power”
A few weeks ago, Liz Hurley, 60, posted a photo of herself on Instagram standing proudly beside her 85-year-old mum. Both, says Julie Burchill in The Spectator, were in leopard-print swimming costumes from Hurley’s extremely successful beachwear firm. “I felt absolute glee.” Like most people, I became aware of Hurley when she wore “That Dress” – black Versace held together by safety pins – at the 1994 premiere of her then-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s film Four Weddings and a Funeral. What she has always had is “old-fashioned, uncomplicated star-power”: a desire to be looked at by the maximum number of people matched with “extreme physical beauty”. In an age when actors seem to be in an “unspoken competition to see who can claim to suffer the most” – Kristen Stewart compared being papped with being raped; Gwyneth Paltrow likens internet trolling to “surviving a war” – the fun Hurley has with fame is refreshing.
For all her genuine elegance, there is something warmly “comical” about Hurley. She is “gloriously vulgar” but passes for posh. Her father was an army major and her mother a junior school teacher and she was a teenage state-school punk. Her voice is classy, but her surname sounds like a burlesque move: “hurley to the left, now hurley to the right!” There is something of the Edwardian showgirl about her – the sort of woman who sporting gents would think “a fine filly”. You can imagine her gossiping in the make-up chair at Pinewood before the war, or in the 1940s “drawing stocking seams up the back of her legs with an eyebrow pencil and mucking in”. In a world of self-pitying, anxious celebrities, Hurley’s “unpretentious, leopard-print-clad delight in her own good fortune” is pure heaven.
Property
THE MOUNTAIN HOUSE This remote one-bedroom lodge sits in 1.5 acres of meadow in the Dolomites, says the FT. On the ground floor is an open-plan living room, dining room and kitchen, and a bathroom. The living area has a woodburner and panoramic views of the mountains through floor-to-ceiling windows. The bedroom is on a mezzanine with mountain views and outside there is a small patio. Venice airport is a 30-minute drive. €1.1m. Click on the image to see the listing.
For love and money
Many young women are turning their backs on the idea of marrying for love, and instead embracing the Jane Austen-style “marriage market”. What’s important, they say, is that a chap has a decent fortune, even if you don’t really fancy him.
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