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by Toby Young

With this week's announcement that Elizabeth Hurley has been awarded the Estée Lauder modelling contract, the nation's favourite pin-up has finally made the transition from being Hugh Grant's girlfriend to a star in her own right. She used to be a celebrity-without-portfolio, the female equivalent of David Mellor. She may have appeared on the front page of The Sun more often than Pamella Anderson, but until now she's done precious little to write home about. With the contract from a major cosmetics company in her back pocket, she's not merely a good tabloid cover story, she's a cover girl.

29-year-old Elizabeth Hurley's meteoric rise has defied all the normal rules of stardom. Most contemporary female icons, like Naomi Campell, begin as supermodels and end up as actresses. Elizabeth began as an actress and has become a supermodel. Again, most beautiful girls have to make a name for themselves before they can get their hooks into a movie star. Elizabeth has been going out with Hugh Grant for eight years and is only now becoming an A-list celebrity.

Finally, a tried-and-tested method of boosting your career is to appear nude in Playboy, as Kim Bassinger and Sharon Stone discovered. But Elizabeth has been appearing half-naked in magazines and films for years and, until she wore 'That Dress', no one paid her any attention. In the most bizarre twist of all, no one noticed Elizabeth Hurley until she put her clothes on.

Not that the dress in question left much to the imagination. It may have cost £2,540, but it was held together with 24 safety pins and weighed less than a bag of sugar. The invitation to the premier of Four Weddings And A Funeral told guests to dress as if going to a wedding. Elizabeth's outfit looked more like something you'd see at a stag party.

Standing next to her, Paula Yates, Mariella Frostrup, Anneka Rice, Tanya Bryer, Paula Hamilton and Emma Freud didn't get a look in. Michael Foster, the head of ITN, told Elizabeth at the time, "Do you realise every woman at this party hates you for wearing that dress?" Fortunately for her, most paparazzis are red-blooded males. By the time the flashbulbs had stopped popping, Elizabeth had a tan to match her boyfriend's.

The dress alone can't account for her impact. Helena Christiansen had worn it to the Versace show in Milan the previous year, and Marla Marples wore it on a night out with Donald Trump in New York, yet few people noticed. The day after the premier, every tabloid carried a picture of Elizabeth wearing it on the front page, relegating the unexpected death of John Smith to page three. Later this month it's going to be auctioned for chairty.

Her relationship with Hugh Grant, whom she met on a film set in 1987, certainly hasn't been a handicap. Four Weddings And A Funeral, for which he was only paid £40,000, has grossed $250 million worldwide, catapulting him to international stardom. The word of mouth on his first Hollywood film, Nine Months, is so positive his asking price has soared to $7 million.

Like the good English gentleman he is, he does whatever he can to help her career. One film executive was recently overheard in The Groucho Club loudly complaining about incessant phone calls from Grant, urging him to re-consider Elizabeth for a role for which she'd been rejected. The executive had to resort to sending him a video cassette of her screen test to prove just how "unsuitable" she was.

Grant recently appointed Elizabeth "head of development" at Simian Films, the production company he was given as part of a two-year deal with Ted Turner's Castle Rock Entertainment. Her brief is to persuade well-known authors to write screenplays for "Hughie", as she calls him. Novelists all over the country have been waiting by the phone, salivating at the prospect of being "lunched" by Elizabeth. So far, the only author she's signed up is Michael Dibden.

Grant benefits from the association almost as much as her. Apart they both look like shop window dummies-together they belong on top of a wedding cake. They have the kind of media wattage that can light up a room, a Burton and Taylor for the Nineties. "They give good couple," says one of their friends. Now that Charles and Di have split up Hugh and Elizabeth have been promoted to token Royals.

More importantly, she is the perfect foil for his high camp style. Grant may have played James Wilby's boyfriend in Maurice, but with Elizabeth Hurley on his arm we can be sure that the only floppy thing about him is his hair.

In spite of all this, Elizabeth's celebrity has left many people scratching their heads. Even members of her own circle can't understand what all the fuss is about. When asked if he'd be prepared to discuss her on the radio, Four Weddings And A Funeral writer Richard Curtis groaned: "Not Elizabeth again."

Elizabeth Hurley's great asset is her prodigous sex appeal. In her brief appearance as an air hostess in Passenger 57, her only Hollywood role to date, she sizzles with a raw, magnetic sexyness that burns a hole in the screen. In a recent poll in Penthouse, she was voted the woman readers would most likely to see with her clothes off, beating even Daniella Westbrook from Eastenders. They won't have to look far. There's a topless shot of Elizabeth in this Month's Mayfair.

Elizabeth manages to be glamourous without being inaccessable. Like Susan George, she has the common touch. She may have the voice of a page boy but she has the figure of a page three girl. When The Sun invited anyone who knew Elizabeth to call their "Hurley Hotline" a former punk rocker called Septic contacted them offering details of their year-long teenage romance. She and Grant may have just rented a country house near Bath, but Elizabeth could be the girl next door.

The combination of a cut glass accent with an hour glass figure is irresistable to the great British public. She may be a West End girl, but her East End bust encourages most men to think she wouldn't turn her nose up at them. Perhaps if they were really on form when she walked into the local pub...who knows what might happen? One journalist had the misfortune to walk past a building site with her. The wolf whistles are still ringing in his ears.

Now that she's the face of Estée Lauder she may acquire some airs and graces. One tabloid reported her contract was worth £2.5 million, so she won't have to borrow a dress from Versace next time she goes to a premiere. A court case in which she is the star witness (she was mugged last November) has been brought forward so she can attend the Oscars later this month, though so far a nomination has eluded her. She recently completed filming Mad Dogs And Englishman in which she plays an upper-class junkie, the first role in a long time in which she hasn't had to take her top off. [Note to lawyer: her most recent roles were in Beyond Bedlam and Sharpe in both of which she took her top off.]

She is rumoured to be considering a job as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the role which Fergie was deemed unsuitable for two years ago. "Elizabeth Hurley would certainly draw the crowds," said a UNHCR spokesperson. "She's one of a number of options on the table." Perhaps the next time she appears on the front page of The Sun she will be cradling a little orphan boy in Rwanda. For his sake, let's hope she's wearing that dress.

The Sunday Times