Elizabeth Hurley says having son Damian direct film sex scene was not ‘a big deal’
Elizabeth Hurley has reassured fans that being directed by her son in an on-screen intimate scene “wasn’t a big deal at all”.
The Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery actor will soon star in the new film Strictly Confidential, directed by her 22-year-old son Damian Hurley.
In the thriller, Georgia Lock plays a woman called Mia who returns to the Caribbean island of St Kitts on the anniversary of her friend Rebecca’s death by apparent suicide. While trying to investigate the terms of Rebecca’s passing, Mia is pulled into a seductive world of sex, betrayal and murder.
However, the feature has raised eyebrows among film connoisseurs as it features Elizabeth, who plays Rebecca’s mother, being directed by Damian in a sex scene.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Elizabeth, 58, has addressed viewers’ shock towards the scene.
“Yes, of course, people have got their knickers in a twist about it a bit,” she began.
“But actually for us it wasn’t a big deal at all, just one of the seven scenes we were shooting on that day. We didn’t have a lot of time. It was a night scene… and the minute it gets dark the mosquitoes start dive-bombing you… There was a bit of exposed flesh for the mosquitoes to get…”
As a result of the insect conditions, Hurley added, she and Damien were more focused on completing the shooting and moving on, meaning that they didn’t consider the unusual circumstances they were working in.
“We didn’t really think about it very much,” she continued. “Though I know other people think it’s sort of rather startling.”
Last month, the mother-son duo addressed their working relationship, with Elizabeth noting that it feels “liberating” to work with family.
While speaking to Access Hollywood, the Bedazzled star noted that Damian takes images for her fashion brand Elizabeth Hurley Beach and that he “looks out for me”.
She added: “Who likes being photographed in bikinis? No-one, even when you’re 22 and fabulous... but it’s relaxing knowing someone’s behind the camera who looks out for me, which was the same on this movie in a way.
“The things that his script needed me to do weren’t necessarily things I’d always done in movies many times before. But having him there meant that I felt safe and looked after, and I knew, in the production and in the post, he’d look after me.
“So actually it’s kind of liberating to work with your family, I may do it again.”
Damian is Elizabeth’s son with the late film producer Steve Bing, who died by suicide in 2020.
Earlier this month, the model and director told the Sunday Times that directing his mother in the film’s sex scene felt “totally normal”.
“I was speaking to a lot of my friends who are also [the] second generation of parents in the industry,” he said. “They say exactly the same thing: that things to outsiders that may seem totally strange and extraordinary, for us we’ll just have grown up with in everyday life.”
Strictly Confidential has received disappointing reviews since its US release earlier this month, with its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score currently sitting at 14 per cent.
According to Variety’s reviewer Dennis Harvey, the film “starts out looking like an erotic thriller-mystery, then descends into a series of flashback-laden explication monologues more apt for Dynasty than Agatha Christie”.
It will be released on digital platforms in the UK on 13 May.
