Liz: I wish I’d had a second baby... an only child is more insular
THE closeness and frankness of the relationship she enjoys with her teenage son is well known.
Elizabeth Hurley even admits that 16-year-old Damian regularly chooses her daring outfits and often takes her raunchy social media pictures.
The pair are frequently pictured together at red carpet events, with the proud mother snuggling up to her son or holding his hand.
Yet the actress and model admits that despite this strong mother- son bond, there is one thing missing in her life – her only regret, she has revealed, is not having more children.
Miss Hurley, 52, said she would have liked Damian to have had sibling to ‘squabble with and to love’.
She has a brother and a sister – and believes that only children are more insular and confident than those from bigger families.
Miss Hurley told Grazia magazine: ‘What would have made more difference in my life is if I’d had more than one child. I was one of three, a big sister and a little brother to squabble with and to love. Damian doesn’t have that. They’re very different, single children, more insular but very at ease with themselves, very self-possessed, focused.’
Damian was the product of a brief fling she had with US businessman Steve Bing. Miss Hurley rose to fame during her earlier 13-year relationship with Hugh Grant, which ended in 2000.
She was married to Indian textile heir Arun Nayar between 2007 and 2010, and was engaged to former Australian cricket star Shane Warne for two years before their break-up four and a half years ago.
In the Grazia interview, Miss Hurley also revealed how she relies on help to keep her looks – Botox injections that smooth the wrinkles in her forehead.
‘Plastic surgery? I’d be too scared,’ she said. ‘Fillers? Forget about it! But I have had Botox in my forehead.’
Miss Hurley raised eyebrows in April when she wore a dress with a plunging neckline for Damian’s birthday party.
But she branded as ‘absolute rubbish’ reports that she embarrassed her son, claiming he had begged her to wear the outfit.
She said Damian, a budding actor who stars alongside her in US sitcom The Royals, picked out the gown and ‘shoehorned’ her into it. ‘He chooses clothes for me,’ she told Stella magazine this month. ‘He’s my stylist.
‘It was only a family birthday dinner, but he said, “Mummy, please don’t come downstairs with Ugg boots on, please get dressed”. I was like, ugh, I’ve got to put shoes on? OK, you pick out a dress.
‘So he went upstairs to my archive and came down with that vintage Versace dress, that I wore just after I had him. It was a bit tighter than last into time, it.’ Miss but Hurley, we shoehorned whose Instagram me account is filled with images of her posing in skimpy bikinis, has also revealed that she asks Damian to take her pictures because he is ‘a very good photographer’. In February, she told the Mail about the effort that goes into taking the photos, which she uses to plug her swimwear brand. ‘Damian takes some, but I have some some other too,’ she friends said. I ‘Some can torture of them for are professional. My son takes the odd one … my mother’s taken a few. It’s a family affair. ‘I will rope anyone in to take a picture, and my son happens to be a very good photographer. ‘But you can tell – if we shot it, I’ll be in dark glasses because I haven’t got make-up on, and my hair is everywhere.’
‘Damian has no one to squabble with’