Elizabeth Jane Hurley was born on June 10, 1965 (see Elizabeth Hurley's Birthday Countdown to find out how many days until her next birthday) in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom. The daughter of an army officer father and an elementary schoolteacher mother, Hurley grew up in the suburb of Basingstoke, England. Her dream as a youth was to become a dancer, so she went to a boarding school for ballet instruction when she was twelve years old. She soon returned home, however. Around the age of sixteen, Hurley became caught up in the English punk-rock scene and even wore pink hair and a nose ring. Hurley says, "When I was sixteen -- this was about 1981, '82 -- the thing to be in Basingstoke, the suburb I grew up in, was punk. Which, as any hip person will tell you, was way past its sell-by date. But the thing to do was to have a pierced nose and spiky hair. And I loved the music. Still do." Despite her punkiness, Hurley won a college scholarship to the London Studio Centre, which taught courses for dance and theater.

Hurley parlayed her training at the London Studio Centre into theatre work and made her screen debut at the age of 21 in Bruce Beresford's movie Aria in 1987. Several roles in television and the film Remando al viento (1987) with young actor (and future beau) Hugh Grant soon followed. Continuing her streak of success, Hurley drew accolades for her portrayal of the title role of Christabel Bielenberg in the BBC mini-serial Christabel in 1988. Then, in 1992, Hurley made her Hollywood film debut as a terrorist (she can terrorize me any day) in the Wesley Snipes action drama Passenger 57. Despite this appearance, Hurley was disappointed in the lack of meaty roles she received after two years of auditioning in Hollywood, so she returned to England.

Unbeknownst to Hurley, her fame was soon to skyrocket for two reasons. Reason number one was the London premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral (Grant's 1994 movie), where Hurley wowed the crowd by wearing a black Versace dress that was held together by nothing more than safety pins. (You can find several pictures of that dress on this site at the Pictures section, FYI.) Hurley says, "That dress was a favor from Versace because I couldn't afford to buy one. His people told me they didn't have any evening wear, but there was one item left in their press office. So I tried it on and that was it."

Since producing Extreme Measures, the well-rounded Hurley has continued to be very busy with a plethora of projects. The film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) was probably the biggest and and most successful of those projects. On Austin Powers' impact on her career, Hurley says ". . . thanks to Austin Powers, I'm earning more money acting than I have before and getting better scripts. But that film was not what I feel comes naturally to me. I'm actually a more melancholy, more serious actress. I mean, in England I got known for very sad, dramatic, quite heavy emotional BBC dramas."

Hurley has appeared in several movies since portraying the "shagadelic" Vanessa Kensington in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. She had a major role in the film Dangerous Ground in 1997. After a brief absence from the big screen in 1998, Hurley reappeared with a vengeance. She starred in several films that were released within a year of each other -- Permanent Midnight (Fall 1998), My Favorite Martian (Spring 1999), Ed TV (Spring 1999), and Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me (Summer 1999). In addition to her starring roles in the above movies, Hurley served as a producer of Simian Film's second film, Mickey Blue-Eyes, which premiered Fall 1999.

The year 2000 found Ms. Hurley as busy as ever. Movie projects included The Weight of Water with Sean Penn and Catherine McCormack and Bedazzled with Brendan Frasier. However, after a couple of years of speculation (and to the great disappointment of many of her fans), Ms. Hurley did not portray Lara Croft from the video game Tomb Raider in the theatrical release. The role went to Angelina Jolie (who, as blasphemous as it sounds, was probably better for the role--she was perfectly cast, I think).