“A belated (because it took me two days to work out how to screen record) Happy 60th Birthday to the glorious Hugh Grant,” Elizabeth Hurley wrote on Sept. 11, two days after Hugh turned the big 6-0. The 55-year-old Austin Powers actress and swimwear icon shared a clip of Hugh dancing to the Pointer Sisters “Jump (For My Love)” from Love, Actually. While sending love to her ex, Elizabeth called Hugh “a magnificent addition to the human race — even though he looks like a monkey. [heart emoji] you forever xxxx.”
Liz and Hugh’s relationship was the talk of the mid-90s after the two met on the set of Remando Al Viento in 1987. In 1995, Hugh was famously arrested while soliciting a sex worker, Divine Brown (aka Estella Marie Thompson), and despite this, Liz stayed by his side. “I’ve done an abominable thing, and she’s [Liz Hurley] been amazing about it,” Hugh said during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, per The Guardian. “And contrary to what I read in the paper today, she’s been very supportive, and we’re going to try to work it out.” The couple managed to make their relationship last for five more years before calling it quits in 2000.
As to what caused the breakup, both Hugh and Liz have different takes on that. High chalked it up to “the sex bit probably fizzled out,” during a 2015 episode of Watch What Happens Live. “[B]ut now, she’s my absolute best friend – number one person I call in a crisis.”
A month later, it was Liz’s turn to stop by WWHL, and she said that they broke up because he’s a grump. “He used to really annoy me, actually. I mean, I love him, but, um, he’s very annoying,” she told host Andy Cohen, per Elle. “My friends used to call him Grumpelstiltskin. He is very grumpy.”
The grump Grant probably isn’t thrilled that Liz used that dancing scene to wish him a Happy Birthday. Hugh said in 2019 that the scene was “absolute hell” to shoot. “I thought, That’s going to be excruciating, and it has the power to be the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid,” he said in Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, a career retrospective, per Vanity Fair. “Imagine you’re a grumpy 40-year-old Englishman, it’s 7 o’clock in the morning, and you’re stone-cold sober…it’s absolute hell.” Happy Birthday, Hugh!
