It’s been 25 years since Elizabeth Hurley last played Vanessa Kensington in the Austin Powers franchise, but that doesn’t mean she’s done with the character.
Speaking to Us Weekly exclusively as part of Estée Lauder’s Breast Cancer Campaign, Hurley, 59, revealed she’d be open to doing another Austin Powers movie.
“You know what, I love Austin Powers and I really love Mike Myers,” she said. “If he wanted me, I would say yes.”
Hurley appeared in the 1997 spy comedy hit Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and in its 1999 sequel, The Spy Who Shagged Me.
In the original movie, Vanessa is a spy who, though initially repulsed by Austin (Myers), grows to love and eventually marries him. It’s revealed in The Spy Who Shagged Me that Vanessa is actually a fembot. She eventually self-destructs, rendering Austin single again.
Hurley did not appear in the third film, Austin Powers in Goldmember, because she was pregnant with her son, Damian.
“When I was offered it, I said to them — and they were the first people who knew, aside from my immediate family — I said, ‘Guys, I’m pregnant.’ And I was pregnant with my son,” she recalled in an April appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “I said, ‘So, unless you shoot it literally next week, I don’t think I can shoot it.’”
Hurley added that she gained 63 pounds during her pregnancy, and there would have been no way to hide her baby bump in the film.
“So it wasn’t my fault,” she quipped. “It would be like Dr. Evil had impregnated me once I was away, so it couldn’t work!”
While there’s no word yet on whether there will even be another Austin Powers movie, Myers has hinted at the possibility.
”I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of such a project,” Myers, 61, said of a fourth movie while on the red carpet of the 49th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award event in April.
Myers added that he “absolutely” believes that Austin Powers has more stories to tell.
In the meantime, however, Hurley will continue advocating for breast cancer awareness. She’s been involved in the Estée Lauder campaign since 1995, getting involved after losing her grandmother to the disease.
Many celebrities have spoken out about their personal battles with breast cancer over the years. Julia Louis-Dreyfus went public with her breast cancer diagnosis in September 2017 via Instagram. Nearly one year later, she had successfully beaten the illness and returned to work on Veep. “It sounds kind of corny, but there’s something about after […]
“That was the time when it really clicked into place how one could really combine one’s work with doing good with spreading the word,” she said. “And then I think when social media became a big thing, we also realized how we could use that as a tool for good as well.”
Elizabeth Hurley. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
In addition to a healthy diet and exercise to help lower cancer risk, Hurley also recommends women learn how to examine themselves.
“Learning how to examine your own breasts and just being breast aware is something that we are really flagging up to women, including younger women,” she said. “And that’s perhaps things that they haven’t done before.”
With reporting by Travis Cronin
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