London: Liz Hurley and her husband have separated, the British actress announced on Sunday, as a newspaper reported she has been having an affair with Australia cricket great Shane Warne.
“Not a great day,” Hurley told her followers on social networking site Twitter. “For the record, my husband Arun and I separated a few months ago.
“Our close family and friends were aware of this.”
Hurley, 45, who has an eight-year-old son, Damian, married Indian businessman Arun Nayar three years ago.
Britain’s News of the World tabloid reported on Sunday that Hurley had spent two nights with Warne, 41, in his London hotel suite last week.
She had been flirting with him for months via Twitter, it said in an article accompanied by photographs of Warne and Hurley embracing.
Divorced former leg-spin bowler Warne arrived in Britain on Wednesday to shoot interviews for his new television show, Warnie, the newspaper said.
He has been commentating on the ongoing Ashes series for Australia’s Channel Nine television network.
Previous affairs cost Warne not only his marriage but the vice-captaincy of the Australia Test side in 2000 and the opportunity to become his country’s one-day captain two years later.
In 2005 his behaviour saw him sacked from a previous contract with Nine.
The continuing controversy surrounding his private life could well put paid to whatever slim chance there was of a comeback for Warne, who retired from Test cricket in 2007.
A number of former Test players have called for him to return to bolster an Australia side now 1-0 down in the Ashes series.
Hurley and Nayar married in a civil ceremony at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, south-west England in 2007 and held a blessing and party at the castle the following night.
They then had traditional Indian wedding celebrations at the Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur.
Hurley and actor Hugh Grant were one of Britain’s leading celebrity couples in the 1990s before they split after his arrest in 1995 for consorting with a Hollywood prostitute.
Also a model, Hurley was well-known for her daring choice of clothes at various red-carpet events and in 1994 wore a Versace dress held together by safety pins.
