Interview: Liz Hurley, actress

ELIZABETH HURLEY loves to tweet. She has nearly 200,000 followers and no wonder, since she’s happy to share titbits about her love life with her fiancé, the Australian cricketer Shane Warne, to take us onto the set of her latest acting role in US hit TV show Gossip Girl and give us an up-close and personal view of her swimwear range, Liz Hurley Beach.

She’ll even invite us into her “much, much too hot bath” and no doubt tomorrow will be tweeting about her appearance in the capital to light up Jenners in Princes Street and promote the Estée Lauder Pink Ribbon Collection to raise money for the beauty brand’s Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign.

The 46-year-old actress will be turning on the charm, and the pink lights to illuminate the building, and adding a touch of glamour to the capital in her capacity of ambassador for the beauty brand.

Since Evelyn Lauder started the campaign to raise funds for research in 1993, it has raised nearly £200 million and every October lights up more than 200 landmark buildings in pink. Last week Hurley lit up Selfridges in London. Next week she heads for Moscow and then it’s back to New York.

Her visit to Scotland has also allowed her and nine-year-old son Damian to watch Australian cricketer fiancé Shane Warne playing golf in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in St Andrews at the weekend. Warne – who proposed to Hurley at dinner at The Old Course Hotel – joined celebrities such as former flame Hugh Grant and Chris Evans in the annual match.

“Shane is playing in a golf tournament in St Andrews so Damian and I will be shivering on the links, being supportive,” she said beforehand. “I’ve been to the Edinburgh Festival, but I haven’t spent nearly enough time in Scotland and mean to rectify that. Last year we travelled to Glasgow for the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign and I’m thrilled to be coming to Edinburgh this year.”

Following the golf it’s straight back to business helping front the BCA campaign, meeting fans and those touched by cancer. Breast cancer is diagnosed in around 50,000 people each year, including 300 men. She has experienced the disease in her own family too.

“I know so many people who have battled breast cancer and they didn’t all make it. My grandmother died of breast cancer and I personally know six women under the age of 40 – all mothers – who fought, or are fighting, the disease. This disease touches everyone in every country,” she says.

“Every October I go round the world raising funds and awareness for breast cancer. I am passionate about talking to women about their breast health. We’re all scared of breast cancer, but we now know that if a localised breast cancer tumour is detected early, it is 98 per cent curable.

“That’s why it’s so important to get the message out and tell every woman to see their doctors regularly and get a mammogram every year over the age of 40. I know many women who discovered their own tumours by self-examination. It is one of the most important things a woman can do for herself once a month and it’s free.”

Recent opportunities for Hurley have seen her back in front of the camera for Gossip Girl and no-one was more excited about her TV role than Damian, who was able to join his mother on set. Usually when Hurley is working her mother looks after Damian.

“I dipped my toe back into showbusiness in February, when Warner Brothers asked me to shoot the pilot for Wonder Woman. A few months later they offered me Gossip Girl. I’m playing Diana Payne, a self-made media mogul with questionable morals,” she says.

“Damian spent a month or so with me in New York over the summer and loved it. He made his own short movie and ran my Gossip Girl lines with me every night. He thought it the most exciting thing that ever happened. He got to be in my trailer and hang out on a film set, which is what he has longed for his entire life.”

With her blue eyes, expertly streaked auburn hair and bikini-ready-even-in-the-depths-of winter figure, Hurley epitomises glamour. She’s also charming and fun.

I can’t help but warm to a woman whose Twitter profile juxtaposes “bikini designer” and “organic farmer”, along with mum, model and actress. No wonder the Aussie King of Spin – and, according to the tabloids, seduction – was bowled over when they met at a charity function last summer.

Nicknamed “the Big Blonde” by Hurley, Warne has recently attracted attention for his dramatic transformation from Aussie bloke to Ken doll and all-round Hurley hunk, sporting tamed eyebrows and his surfer streaks toned down to a smart dark do.

Warne responded that it was all down to weight loss and Estée Lauder beauty creams and tweeted: “I have always taken pride in my appearance and an attack on EH is unfair. I’m proud of how I look and worked my butt off for four months.”

Why does Hurley feel the need to tweet so much?

“I’m a Twitter fan and am always interested in what my followers have to say. I don’t take tweeting very seriously and most of my tweets are extremely silly,” she says. “Obviously, I’m in complete control of anything I tweet. Press releases are virtually extinct; now, if I have anything to say, I’ll tweet it. I don’t generally comment on silly things written about me, but if it’s untrue and hurtful to my family then I may.”

Hurley’s parrot Ping Pong, a Christmas gift from Warne, also tweets and has 5,700 followers of her own. Intriguingly she shares Warne’s love of lasagne and dislike of British weather. He lives with Hurley and three dogs at the actress’s Gloucestershire organic farm, where Hurley loves to retreat when her schedule allows.

Hurley says: “I love being with my family and friends and all my happiest memories involve them. I love spending time with my son and we spend a lot of time just the two of us.”

Despite a fortune of £13m, a £4.3m farmhouse and a £2.5m Chelsea townhouse jointly owned with Grant, one of her favourite things is “a starfish my Dad picked up on a beach in Sicily and sent me when I was about four. I treasure it, along with the letter with which it came.”

And her take on life’s vicissitudes is equally philosophical.

“I love my life but I’ve had many knocks along the way. Even when it’s good, I know that what goes up has to come down again. I just firmly believe that it’s cyclical and if you keep at it you’ll have another moment to shine.”

And if you head along to Jenners tomorrow, you’ll see the dazzling Miss Hurley having just such a moment.

• Elizabeth Hurley will be making a personal appearance at Jenners in Edinburgh on Tuesday for Estée Lauder’s Breast Cancer Awareness campaign.