Elizabeth Hurley

• Film
Hurley made her first film appearance in Aria (1987). She has since appeared in the movies Passenger 57, EDtv, Bedazzled, and Serving Sara. In 1997, she received her first and only acting award, the ShoWest Supporting Actress of the Year, for her performance in the spy spoof Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. When Hugh Grant founded and became the director of Simian Films in 1994, Hurley was credited as one of the producers for the company's two Grant vehicles, Extreme Measures (1996) and Mickey Blue Eyes (1999). In 2000, she was publicly criticised for breaking a five-month acting strike to film an Estée Lauder advertisement, for which she was fined $100,000 (£70,000 in 2000) by the Screen Actors Guild and labelled "Elizabeth Scably" by protesters.
• Television
In 1988, Liz Hurley appeared briefly in a speaking part as a schoolgirl in Last Seen Wearing, an episode of the detective series Inspector Morse, which episode was partly filmed in a real school, Reading Blue Coat, Sonning, Berkshire. This is believed to have been her first TV role. In the late 1980s, Hurley portrayed the title character in a five-part television drama, Christabel. After appearing in John Cleese's The Human Face (2001), she hosted the inaugural season of the British reality series Project Catwalk on Sky 1 in 2006. The show drew tepid ratings with only 1% of its target audience tuning into the first few episodes. Hurley was almost universally criticised as a presenter. Marcelle D'Argy Smith, a former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, called her "witheringly boring" and added: "Liz Hurley has no fashion experience whatsoever. She wore a dress and has appeared at premieres." GQ's Dylan Jones defended her as someone "immersed in the fashion world as a celebrity." Hurley was ridiculed by critics for her "aspirational Basingstoke-gone-jetset accent and dead fish stare," while also being described as "the not-nice-but-dim host."