There aren’t many celebrity relationships that genuinely blossom into firm friendships, but Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley seem to have nailed it. The actor, 64, and the model and actress, 59, have weathered many dramas in their four decades of friendship and love, but have somehow come out of it all without needing to be held together by safety pins, unlike that dress. Let’s look back at what a crazy journey they’ve been on together …
How it Began
Years before he became the go-to romcom lead and way before she wore that dress, Grant and Hurley — then just 27 and 22 — met on the set of the 1987 Spanish movie Remando al Viento (Rowing with the Wind.) As two well-spoken Brits trying to make their names in the film industry, they quickly hit it off.
They had soon moved into a small apartment together and were just like any other pair of struggling actors until Grant won the role that would make him a huge global star, as the lead in 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral. At the time, Grant was 32 and rapidly becoming disillusioned with acting. “If you read as many bad scripts as I did, you’d know how grateful you are when you come across one where the guy actually is funny,” he told Variety in 2002.
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It was at the Four Weddings premiere in London on May 11, 1994, that Hurley, already a busy actress but certainly not a household name, became a superstar too, all thanks to that legendary, oh-so-sexy black dress. “That dress was a favour from Versace because I couldn’t afford to buy one,” she said many years later. “I’m thrilled it became so iconic.”
Suddenly, they were the hottest celebrity couple on the planet.
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How Long it Lasted
Basically forever! Showing that a solid foundation of friendship can endure many a-drama, the couple stayed together for 13 years, eventually going their separate ways in 2000.
“I think it’s partly because we went from zero to somewhere together, and we went through terrible years at the beginning when neither of us had any work, living in a tiny flat,” Grant said on The Jess Cagle Interview in 2018. “It was quite bonding.”
Although they never married or even got engaged, Hurley said they did often joke about what their kids would be like. “Of course we used to think about it because we used to fight all day,” she told Andy Cohen in 2024. “We used to look in the mirror next to each other and say, ‘It’d have to be my eyes.’ ‘No, my eyes.’ ‘Your hair.’ ‘No, my hair!’ … So we used to bicker for hours about who would look like who.”
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How it Ended
In possibly one of the most amicable splits in celebrity history, the pair decided they would be better off as friends.
In May 2000, just months after co-founding production company Simian Films together, Hurley issued a statement confirming that their romance was no more. “Hugh and I are no longer a couple,” she confirmed. “We are still great friends and talk all the time.”
It’s a line often trotted out by celebrity couples who’ve split, but these two actually meant it. When Hurley became a mom in 2002 to her only child, Damian, with the late businessman Steve Bing, Grant was even named as one of his six godfathers (along with Sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish, plus Denis Leary, American millionaire Teddy Forstman and Henry Dent Brocklehurst.)
What They Said About Each Other
Back in 2000, in his first interview following the split, the professionally self-deprecating Grant told German publication Hör Zu that he was just too dull for his glamour-oozing ex. “Basically my life is so boring, it’s embarrassing,” he said. “I would love to be a jet-setter, flying off to parties in New York and Monte Carlo. Obviously I was simply too dull for Liz.”
In more recent years, a more rounded picture of the relationship, and subsequent friendship, has formed.
What They Say Now
In 2015, both Hurley and Grant spoke separately about their relationship on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live.
“The sex bit probably fizzled out,” admitted Grant. “But now she’s my absolute best friend — number one person I call in a crisis.”
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Hurley, meanwhile, talked about how much the actor irritated her when they were together. “He used to really annoy me,” she said. “I love him, but he’s very annoying.” She even admitted that her friends nicknamed the star “Grumpelstiltskin” due to his moody tendencies — but she did concede that he was 10 out of 10 in bed, laughing “I was with him for 13 years!”
In 2016, Hurley spoke more glowingly about Grant in an interview with Us Weekly. “He’s still my best friend today and I still speak to him every day,” she told Us. “That was the best costar I’ve ever had, for sure.”
In 2017, Hurley told People that she still found her ex to be quite the charmer. “He’s very naughty,” she said. “Not hugely grown-up. But I think that’s just charming as well.”
The following year, on The Jess Cagle Interview, Grant admitted he was “an idiot” during their relationship, but said they now felt “like brother and sister”, after going through so much together over their formative years in the spotlight. Hurley later reacted to Grant’s “idiot” comment, telling E! News in 2018, “I didn’t know he said that … although I mean he is, of course, an idiot. I’m very lucky that 31 years into our friendship, he’s still my best friend in the world. He’s a really great guy. Yeah, I see him a lot, I speak to him a lot. You know, he’s now a father of five, he has five kids and he’s a great dad. He’ll remain my best friend for life.”
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Hurley also reflected on their unique journey together while in conversation with her son Damian at the Bazaar At Work summit in London in 2024. “I was with my ex, Hugh Grant, so it happened to both of us at the same time,” she said. “Like me, he’d also worked a lot, and thought he was doing pretty well, until Four Weddings and a Funeral came out and suddenly it was completely different – he was a phenomenon. The film was a massive success, and everything changed. But there were two of us and I think that massively helped. When you’re suddenly thrust into the spotlight, your lives aren’t set up for it. I think it gives you a bond when you sort of go to the trenches with someone. I mean, he’s married with five children. I hardly ever see him, but he’s still very close to my heart.”
Key Relationship Takeaways
What a ride these two have been on together! But now, as Hurley herself put it on The Jonathan Ross Show in 2017, “We’ve been apart longer than we were together.”
Now, with Grant a busy father of five (he shares two children with his ex, Tinglan Hong, and three with producer Anna Eberstein, who he married in 2018), he might not be able to see Hurley as often as he used to, but it seems certain that they will always be in each other’s lives.
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In fact, Hurley herself said that respecting the boundaries of an ex’s life was key to staying on good terms. “We haven’t been romantically involved for 20 years,” she said on the In The 90s podcast in 2021. “But we’re always very aware that there are other people in our lives. There’s partners, there’s children. You can’t just, sort of, live in a lovely, rosy, mist of the past.”
Right now, Hurley is very much living in the present, with the actress hard-launching her surprise new relationship with Billy Ray Cyrus (who also became a star in the 90s) on Easter Sunday 2025. We just have one question: has Grant met him yet?
Us Weekly
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