The Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant roadshow, at one time the toast of the movie premiere paparazzi, is "temporarily" at an end, it emerged last night.
Putting their relationship on ice, the couple declared through a spokeswoman that their split was "a temporary thing, a mutual and amicable decision".
They denied that there was any third party involved but the news will fuel tabloid speculation about the pair, who have been an item for 13 years but have reportedly not been seen together in the last four months.
They have blamed work commitments for the long absence.
Rumours of a split gained currency when Hurley went to the Cannes Film Festival alone, for the first time in six years.
Hurley, 34, who models for Estee Lauder, has been linked to New York billionaire Ted Forstmann, while Grant, 39, was reportedly seen dining with a mystery woman at a London hotel in March.
The couple said yesterday that they would continue to run Simian Films, the production company they formed five years ago to capitalise on Grant's celebrity.
Their relationship last reached a public crisis point in June 1995, when Grant was fined the equivalent of £75 after admitting engaging in a sex act with the Los Angeles prostitute Divine Brown after picking her up on Sunset Boulevard.
The world watched as the humiliated couple retreated to their country home to discuss the delicate situation.
They stayed together, but Hurley revealed that she "felt like she'd been shot" when she learned that her boyfriend had been arrested. The affair is said to have changed the dynamic of their relationship.
Since then Hurley has warmed to her new role as a movie producer, impressing director Michael Apted, with whom she worked on the 1996 film Extreme Measures which starred Grant and Gene Hackman.
Apted described her as "a hands-on producer at all times. She was the one who had the passion for this project. She was determined to get it made."
By contrast, despite the commercial success of Notting Hill, critics say Grant has been typecast as an upper class English twit.
Hurley's next acting role will be playing the devil in the Twentieth Century Fox movie Bedazzled, while Grant has a role in the Woody Allen comedy Small Time Crooks.
In a magazine interview last autumn, Hurley gave a cool appraisal of their relationship. She said: "We're not like some fabulously happy Adam and Eve all the time. We bicker like mad, but it's like arguing with my sister."
She added: "We talk for hours. We laugh a lot and like every embarrassing couple we have silly acts and characters and nicknames that we repeat incessantly."
She said then: "Even if for some bizarre reason, one of us fell in love with someone else. I couldn't cope with not speaking to him every day. I just couldn't. I couldn't bear to lose Hugh as a friend."
Hurley and Grant were catapulted into the limelight in July 1994, when she arrived at the London premiere of Four Weddings And A Funeral in the Versace dress that launched a thousand flashbulbs.
