Profile/Liz Hurley:By the time her lavish wedding celebrations in a maharaja's palace are over and the photographs have appeared in Hello!(for about €3 million), the people of India will no longer be asking 'who is Liz Hurley?', writes Róisín Ingle
The big question on the lips of Indian locals in the town of Jodhpur this week was not how many elephants were due to be rolled out for the interminable wedding celebrations of Liz Hurley and Indian businessman Arun Nayar or how many jewels would decorate the official wedding sari or even the traditional Marwari fare that will be devoured by the visiting celebrities. The big question was "who is Liz Hurley?" This news came as something of a relief to those of us who, bored with the excess coverage of the English leg of the wedding (10 page-boys, five bridesmaids!) and the hysteria surrounding the India-based bit (the guests played cricket!) wouldn't have minded not knowing.
Well, we say that, but in truth turning our noses up at the tackfest that is the modern celebrity wedding has become a vaguely edifying experience. It's not dissimilar to expressing disgust at the cost of contemporary Communion parties which (tut, tut) are the mainstay of the bouncy-castle industry in this country.
The wedding of Liz (41) and Arun (43), which involved them jetting in from celebrations in a country estate in England to a three-day party in a maharaja's palace in India, followed by a coterie of celebrity friends, including Elton John and Imran Khan, provided the perfect opportunity for a game of mock the celebrity. And anyone gauche enough to flog the exclusive rights to their most intimate romantic moments to a magazine such as Hello! for what is reported to be upwards of £2 million (€2.94 million) deserves all the contempt we can muster.
This voyeurism, engaged in from the lofty confines of the moral high ground, is the reason RTÉ2's recent Brides of Franc programme was such a hit. There's nothing as engrossing as a bridezilla with more money than sense and Liz Hurley, her six-day wedding extravaganza seems to suggest, is the queen of them all.
For the benefit of those bewildered people in Jodhpur scratching their heads and asking "who is Liz Hurley?", she is first and foremost your woman who wore that dress. Or, to give the two pieces of black material bound together with gold safety pins its official title, "that dress". Her one-way ticket to fame and fortune was designed by Versace and worn by Hurley to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994.
This was back when Hurley was just Hugh Grant's girlfriend and not just Liz or La Hurley or, most recently, Mrs Arun Nayar. The dress catapulted her from Hugh Grant's girlfriend territory to international style icon overnight, a sartorial moment to rival Madonna's conical bra phase.
And also Liz Hurley is an actress. Well, that is to say she has acted in several movies, most of which bombed spectacularly. A notable exception was Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, in which, playing Vanessa Kensington, she sent herself up and showed us that despite her rather distant English rose demeanour, she has a sense of humour. But nothing could make us forgive her for her performance as the devil in Bedazzled, no matter how good she looked in that red sparkly bikini and horns.
Hurley is also famous for retaining her dignity when boyfriend Grant was arrested for engaging the services of prostitute Divine Brown. The incident only increased her net worth, introducing her to a US audience. Less appealing was her reference to members of the public as "civilians" and her one-time admission that she kept her figure by consuming only six raisins a day. She may have been joking about this, but her figure maintenance regime is thought to include plenty of ice-cold showers and watercress soup.
Among her lucrative careers is the position of "spokesmodel" for make-up company Estée Lauder, founder of her swimwear company and a prolific fundraiser for breast cancer charities. In short, apart from her low profile in Jodhpur, she is one of the most famous, most photographed of that group of women known as "actress, model, whatever" in the world.
SO WHO WAS that girl who swept into town with 100 security guards to marry one of India's most successful sons? The residents of Jodhpur, who thought that, at 41, Hurley was a bit past-it for a bride, should be told. She's the epitome of a breed of thoroughly modern celebrities with names such as Jordan and Heather, Kerry and Posh. She's a Queen Bee in a community of women who have made lucrative, far-reaching careers from being able to look good wearing dresses without being much use at anything else. She is a triumph of self-determination and the ultimate proof that if you want it badly enough, anything is possible.
As with so many modern celebrities, from Jade Goody to Heather Mills, her fame has little to do with talent and everything to do with a desire to achieve fame using whatever routes are available to her. An older sister, Kathleen, has been quoted as remembering Hurley as a "determined attention-seeker" and she was once in an exhibitionist dance troupe called Vestal Virgins who sported S&M-style costumes.
Hurley's biographer, Alison Bowyer, describes her meeting with Grant as being, for Hurley, "like an act of God, as if God were her PR agent". The pair are similar in that they both come from ordinary middle-class backgrounds but have become synonymous with the Sloane Street set peopled by the likes of Jemima Khan and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.
Despite the faintly aristocratic air affected by Hurley, cultivating friends such as Henry Dent-Brocklehurst, Hurley was raised in a modest bungalow in a middle-class suburb of Essex by parents from London/Irish working-class roots. You wouldn't know it, though, to hear her speak about the little cry she had at her English wedding ceremony when her mate, Elton John, sang and made a speech.
"I'm afraid my stiff upper lip deserted me," she said. Gosh.
After her 13-year relationship with Grant broke up, she later became involved with American film producer Stephen Bing, who, when they split, insisted on a paternity test which did eventually prove that he was the father of her son, Damian. This led to Hurley adopting the classic Diana-like wounded pose, always carrying baby Damian, now aged four, in her arms and rarely being seen using a pushchair. When she was asked in the media about the split with Bing, she used the phrase "I adored him", which is what Diana famously said about her bit on the side, James Hewitt.
Hurley shares with Madonna a genius for self-invention, almost willing herself towards global icon status, although unlike the erstwhile Queen of Pop, Hurley's big hair and slashed dresses mean her style remains firmly stuck in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, the style of wedding attire for the guests this week was strictly controlled, with Hurley establishing a wedding shop in a hotel in Mumbai where outfits - from saris to bindis for the women and kurtas and turbans for the men - could be purchased for every part of the Indian celebrations. God forbid that anyone tries to upstage Hurley's wedding sari, which was encrusted, fact fans, with 4,000 jewels. Not that she minded upstaging one of her aristo friends when she turned up a few years ago at a wedding dressed in a slashed red dress displaying tiny leopard-print underwear.
The main wedding party was due to take place last night in the 15th-century palace of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. Incidentally, the Maharaja, a friend of Prince Charles, has reportedly been banned from using his mobile phone in his own private quarters because of the deal with Hello!.
And you can deny it all you like, but even the most celebrity-phobic of us will be clamouring for a look at the pictures, especially any of Hurley on an elephant.
The Hurley File
Who is she?Model, actress, whatever - and now the ultimate Bridezilla.
Why is she in the news?This week she celebrated her marriage to Indian businessman Arun Nayar with a six-day celebration that spanned two continents
Most appealing characteristic?Her eyebrows. Always expertly trimmed, they are a vast improvement on the ones she sported during her safety-pin-dress-wearing days
Least appealing characteristic?Dresses slashed to the waist, leopard-print thong optional
Most likely to say?"Pass the poppadoms"
Least likely to say?"A role in EastEnders? Super!"