Elizabeth Hurley opens up about her grief and how she raised Damian, now 20 years old, as a single parent.
The Austin Powers Star, 57, spoke with The Times This week is all about being single mom. Although Hurley shares her son with screenwriter and film financier Steve Bing, he didn’t help to raise Damian. Damian had not reportedly met his biological father. He committed suicide in 2020.
“As a single mother, my life’s mission was to be the best parent I could,” Hurley explained to The Times. “Always to be there for Damian, getting him up in the morning and there last thing at night. Unless my sister or mother were there, I never went off for a night. I had childcare, but still I never left him.”
Hurley said that Damian was also loved by men she dated, including her “wonderful stepfather” Arun, and Shane Warne (who died earlier in the year). The Christmas in the Caribbean actress said of Warne, “Damian loved him and had a great relationship with his three children in those formative years.”
Supermodel and supermodel, Kim Kardashian, admitted that it was difficult for her and Damian to see Bing and Warne go.
“Of the four great loves of my life two are dead — I always say to the other two, you’d better watch your backs. It was difficult, and it is still very difficult. It was horrible to lose Shane. It’s taken a long time to sink in,” she noted. “I honestly kept thinking he’d call and it would turn out to be some big Aussie joke.”
She shared that “losing Stephen was something else completely.”
“We’d been estranged for so long but made up towards the end, and a bright and different future looked as if it was opening up, but of course it didn’t,” Hurley said. “For Damian, his death was more of a mental challenge because he didn’t know him as a person. Arun was his father figure. Arun calls him his son, Damian calls him Dad, but Shane was more of a fun uncle figure. But yes, all those things, combined with COVID and lockdown — that was a huge amount for a young person to process.”
Damian spoke out on Instagram about both Bing and Warne’s deaths. On the one year mark of Bing’s passing in June 2021, Damian wrote alongside an image of a purple sunset, “A year ago today, my mother and I received some devastating news. I didn’t realise at the time quite how much it would affect me… We all like to show ‘perfect’ versions of our lives- for me, the idea of publicly discussing something as personal as grief is terrifying… but sometimes it’s necessary. Last year was hard for everyone. I believe it’s important to recognize that. It’s not weak to struggle. To get to the other side of the fence is incredibly difficult.
In tribute to Warne, he shared a throwback photograph of himself and Warne on March 20, 2022.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this,” Damian captioned the post. “SW was a father figure to me for most of my formative years and was truly one the best men I’ve ever known. My heart is broken. Thinking of and sending love to all SW’s family.”
In an October interview with Yahoo Life, Hurley — who is an advocate for breast cancer research — opened up about wanting to stay healthy so she can stay in her son’s life.
“[My son] It plays a big part in it. She said that she was a single mother with a child and didn’t want to leave him. We all want women to be free from breast cancer, for the benefit of womankind, for ourselves and our families. Of course we do. We don’t want anyone to get breast cancer.
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