Divine Brown, the infamous prostitute caught with Hugh Grant in 1995, is currently “a fugitive on the run” after skipping court over criminal damage charges.
Brown, whose real name is Estella Marie Thompson, was arrested in January and charged with criminal damage over claims she deliberately smashed her landlord’s windshield, Page Six can confirm.
The incident caused more than $500 in damage to the car, prosecutors alleged.
Brown was ordered to appear in person before a DeKalb Superior Court judge for her plea hearing in October. However, she failed to appear last week.
In turn, Judge Desiree S. Peagler issued a bench warrant for her arrest, which Page Six has obtained.
The Daily Mail, which was first to report the news, called Brown a “fugitive on the run.” However, when they got in touch with Brown, she claimed she had no idea about the warrant out for her arrest.
“You kidding me? Oh, wow. I will have to call them immediately,” she told a reporter.
Brown, who didn’t immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment, gained notoriety in 1995 when Grant paid her $60 to perform oral sex on him in his car on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip during the actor’s visit to Los Angeles.
They were both caught and arrested and their mugshots instantly made headlines.
Brown was sentenced to six months in jail for participating in “lewd conduct” in a public place.
The arrest violated her probation from previous 1993 prostitution convictions.
As for the “Love Actually” star, he was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and attend an AIDS education program as punishment.
“Last night I did something completely insane,” he said in a statement following his arrest, per the New York Times. “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.”
At the time of the incident, Grant was in a long-term relationship with actress Elizabeth Hurley. The pair started dating in 1987 and split in 2000, as Hurley stuck by Grant’s side after the scandal.
Following her boyfriend’s high-profile arrest, Hurley sat down for an interview with Barbara Walters and confessed that learning of Grant’s sex with Brown left her feeling “like she had been shot.”
Brown, meanwhile, was able to make millions off of the controversy through interviews and public appearances.
The former sex worker told News of the Worldthat same year that it had always been the British actor’s “fantasy” to sleep with a Black woman.
Brown also said she refused full intercourse because Grant was too impatient to pay the extra $40 required to go to a hotel room.
“At one point he got carried away and yanked my hair. I said, ‘Honey, you can’t be that rough,’” she divulged to the outlet.
The publication, notably, paid her a whopping $150,000 for the tell-all.
Following her arrest, Brown went on to work in the porn industry, made paid public appearances, modeled lingerie and posed for Penthouse magazine. She played herself in “Sunset and Divine: The British Experience,” an X-rated docu-drama based on the scandal with Grant.
Brown also created a documentary about her life, “The Divine Brown: Million Dollar Hooker” and attended an event with a Hugh Grant look-alike. Her newfound fame allowed her to leave prostitution behind and live a more lavish life in Beverly Hills.
However, in more recent years, the mom of two had an apparent fall from grace and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she rents a room in a single-story property, according to the Daily Mail.
In 2022, she faced charges of attacking a 13-year-old child, but later struck a plea deal which saw her admit a misdemeanor family violence battery charge.
Grant, for his part, reflected on the scandal back in 2021, revealing that he chose to cheat on Hurley with a prostitute because he was in a “bad frame of mind” over his 1995 movie “Nine Months.”
“I was about to launch my first Hollywood film – my timing was impeccable. My problem was – that was my first Hollywood film and I’d just been to see it,” Grant said on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.
“The film was about to come out a week or two after that, and I had a bad feeling about it. I went to see a screening. Everyone in it was brilliant, but I was so atrocious that I was not in a good frame of mind.”
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