In fact the new millennium was to usher in a very different chapter in her life. Her 13-year romantic partnership with Grant ended in May 2000 and she began a relationship with American businessman Steve Bing, Damian’s biological father (Bing, who died by suicide in 2020, initially denied paternity, though it was later proved by DNA test).
Did motherhood change her? ‘Immensely, because it meant that somebody else was always put first. So often I think in life you’re frequently putting other people first, your parents or your siblings or your friends, or whoever needs you. But when there’s a child, there’s absolutely no doubt about it that they’re going to be first and in some ways that’s quite liberating, because putting someone else ahead of you takes a bit of pressure off yourself as well.
‘Becoming a parent changes you in so many ways. I mean, you’re always scared for your kids on some level. As they’re growing up those fears change in some ways. But you worry for their safety constantly, you worry for their happiness, you worry for their mental health, you worry about everything… But I’m quite a worrier, anyway, so that does tap in a little bit.’
Today, the pair are incredibly close. Now 22, Damian evidently shares not just his mother’s penchant for donning a pair of leather trousers, but her ferocious work ethic (‘Oh yes, we’ll both work 23 hours a day’). Of their decision to start working together professionally, she says ‘it seemed like a very natural progression of the relationship we’d had. Being a single mother of a single child has meant by default that we have spent quite a great deal of time together, even though he was at boarding school for 10 years.’
Something changed in lockdown, she admits, because they were home together for an extended period, ‘and it was during that time he really started writing’. Though she says the film-making bug goes back to much earlier in his childhood, after Hurley gave Damian his first camera when he was eight years old.
‘He sort of chased me around making his baby films, all the way until his mid-teens, which we cut on to DVDs and they are hysterical… There’s me and my friends, Hugh’s in them, my ex Shane [Warne] is in many of them, Shane’s kids, all our cousins, nephews, nieces are in these baby films. And I’d always promised him that when he finally got to do his first feature I would be in it.’
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