Hurley asked about role of ‘best friend’ and ex-partner Hugh Grant in learning about hacking claims
Elizabeth Hurley is being asked about previous cases she has brought against other publishers.
Associated Newspapers (ANL) has denied allegations of wrongdoing but also argues this case has been brought too late.
Antony White, representing ANL, is trying to establish whether Hurley could have brought her claim sooner and is asking about her former boyfriend, Hugh Grant, and his involvement with the press reform campaign group Hacked Off.
The court hears Grant told her she might have a case against the publisher of the Mirror in 2015. She says she thinks he might have “popped round” to tell her, as they only lived around the corner from each other.
The actress received damages from MGN, publisher of the Mirror, in 2017.
In court, Hurley says she did not want to pursue a claim at first as she hadn’t taken much interest in the Leveson Inquiry into press behaviour that had taken place a few years earlier.
However, she says she wanted to help Grant.
“He’s my best friend, one of my best friends,” she says, and in the end she agreed – and gave her awarded damages to Hacked Off.
She says Grant and Hacked Off were doing “good work”.
Hurley tells the court they don’t see each other very often and usually talk about “silly” things or family issues or scripts, but talk of politics or “anything grown up” was “phenomenally” unlikely.
White asks if Grant had known about potential unlawful information gathering by ANL, would he have told her?
Hurley says “supposition is not the same as evidence”, and that she thinks she was told by her lawyer in 2020 that alleged evidence had been found.