Staring sheepishly down the camera lens with his shoulders hunched, Hugh Grant looked awkward to say the least. But then this was not a typical photocall. Instead, Grant was having his mugshot taken in a Los Angeles police station after being arrested for having sex in his car with Divine Brown.

The British actor, who had just shot to stardom playing the lead role in Four Weddings and a Funeral, had fallen spectacularly from grace, thanks to a moment of “insanity”, as he described it, with the sex worker and now faced the possibility of six months in jail for participating in “lewd conduct” in a public place.

Grant was meant to be in Hollywood to promote his latest film, Nine Months, when he decided, as a local paper said, “to take a walk on the wild side”, cruising down LA’s notorious Sunset Strip at night. It was here that he met Divine Brown (real name Estella Marie Thompson), a local sex worker who he paid $60 (£37) to perform oral sex on him in a nearby street.

The Guardian, 28 June 1995. Click here to read article

After their arrest, both were released to have their cases heard later. Grant, the long-term partner of British actor and model Liz Hurley, was quick to release a statement of regret: “Last night I did something completely insane,” he said. “I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.”

But it was Divine Brown who the press really wanted to get to, her unvarnished story probably the more exciting read. Writing in the Guardian, a British tabloid reporter explained how he and his fellow “hacks in macs” tried to get to Brown first. It was the News of the World, however, who got the scoop, paying Brown a reported $100,000 for her story.

What they got from Brown was a blow-by-blow account and a line from her claiming that Grant told her: “I always wanted to sleep with a black woman. That’s my fantasy.”



The Guardian, 3 July 1995. Click here to read article

The tabloid revelations came days before Grant faced sentencing. The actor, who did not attend court, was ordered to pay a fine of $1,000 and go on an Aids education programme. Having avoided a custodial sentence Grant’s career rehabilitation began with an interview on NBC’s primetime Tonight Show with host Jay Leno. The British actor stuttered and fidgeted before asking viewers for forgiveness, saying: “I’ve done an abominable thing, and she’s [Liz Hurley] been amazing about it, and contrary to what I read in the paper today, she’s been very supportive, and we’re going to try to work it out.’’

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At the time, Hurley was still refusing to comment. When she did speak, two months after Grant’s arrest, she said that “she felt like she had been shot” on hearing he had sex with a sex worker. On the same day she broke her silence, the Guardian carried an exclusive interview with Hugh Grant, who was talking to Derek Malcolm, the paper’s film critic.

The Guardian, 3 August 1995

As the couple tried to patch up their relationship in private and public, Divine Brown was pleading no contest to “engaging in lewd conduct in a public place” at her hearing. Having violated her probation for previous prostitution charges, she was given a 180-day prison sentence.



As Brown did not have to serve her sentence for four months, she had time to travel to the UK to promote the Fantasy Channel – an adult station launched on satellite the same year. Speaking to the Guardian, Brown said that she hoped to run into Hugh Grant while she was in the UK.

