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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ryan Gilbey

‘I love erotic thrillers, but this so isn’t one’: Damian Hurley on directing his mother, Elizabeth, in a ‘sensual mystery’

Damian and Liz Hurley at an Oscars party in Beverly Hills, March 2024
‘She brings a sensuality to the screen not many can’: Damian and Liz Hurley at an Oscars party in Beverly Hills, March 2024. Photograph: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Orson Welles was 25 when he directed Citizen Kane. What took him so long? He should have pulled his finger out like Damian Hurley, son of the model and actor Elizabeth Hurley, who was just 20 when he called “Action!” on his own debut, Strictly Confidential. It was filmed on Saint Kitts and Nevis, and could double as a tourist-board commercial for those Caribbean islands were it not for the murder and skulduggery, or lines such as: “You’ve been fucking your dead sister’s boyfriend!”

In his journey to the director’s chair, Hurley, who has a lucrative modelling career, has faced few obstacles. He was given a camcorder at the age of eight. His early shorts starred his mother and her ex, Hugh Grant, who happens also to be one of his godfathers. (Elton John is another.) And he got the chance to make his first feature after a studio executive called him out of the blue to ask if he had any movie ideas. Hard yards these are not.

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