Elizabeth Hurley has revealed that she struggled to film certain scenes in the first Austin Powers film due to her getting “terrible giggling fits” and claims you can even see her laughing at one point.
The 59-year-old actor and model, who recently starred in a controversial film directed by her own son and had to deny rumours that she took Prince Harry’s virginity, played Vanessa Kensington in the 1997 spy spoof - Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
It was Hurley’s first major role in Hollywood and saw her placed opposite comedian Mike Myers, who was already a well-known comedian at that point thanks to his stint on Saturday Night Live and the Wayne’s World movies.
Speaking to The Guardian, Hurley was asked why she never opted to do more comedy films after the first Austin Powers, with her only significant credits afterwards being a small cameo in the second Austin Powers film and Bedazzled with Brendan Fraser.
“I learned from the best playing opposite Mike Myers, whom I adored. I used to get terrible giggling fits when we were shooting and had to play lots of scenes without actually looking Mike in the eye, for fear of corpsing,” admits the star.
Hurley goes on to describe one famous scene from the movie, in which she claims you can actually see her laughing.
“There’s one scene where Austin attacks Basil Exposition’s mother, bellowing to Michael York: “She’s a man, baby!” while trying to yank her wig off to show she’s a spy,” Hurley explains. “But it isn’t a wig as she’s a perfectly ordinary old lady. I ruined every take by laughing and I’m ashamed to say that in the actual movie, you can see I’m glassy-eyed and smirking.”
Elsewhere, her former partner, Hugh Grant has revealed that his youngest daughter’s name is a hilarious reference to Austin Powers.
Grant, who dated Hurley for 13 years between 1987 to 2000, said that the decision for the name came after finding himself “in a bit of a panic” with his wife, Anna Elisabet Eberstein, whom he married in 2018.
While Grant has not revealed the first name of the two daughters he has with Eberstein, he did say of his six-year-old, who was born in March 2018: “We thought it might be nice for her when she was older if she could say in bars that her middle name is Danger. So her name is Lulu Danger Grant. Austin Powers, you know?”
In the first Austin Powers film, International Man of Mystery (1997), Powers (Mike Myers) corrects a man who asks him if his name is Danger Powers. When he tells him his name is, in fact, Austin Powers, the man replies: “It says here Danger Powers,” to which Austin flirtily looks at Hurley’s character and says: “No, no, no – Danger’s my middle name.”
