For years they partied hard together – indeed, so glimmering were their gilded lives that they styled themselves ‘The Viles’ after the Bright Young Things in Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel Vile Bodies.
The irony of that nickname must be all too painful for them to recollect today, considering the depths to which one of their famous number has fallen since their 1990s partying heyday.
For vile doesn’t even come close to describing the now notorious crimes of Ghislaine Maxwell, currently imprisoned for sex trafficking. Yet she was front and centre of The Viles set, along with actress, model and ‘philanthropist’ Liz Hurley.
A picture of the pair together from 1996 showed them shoulder to shoulder, Hurley with glass in hand, Maxwell dressed in a gold rollneck, at a New York party.
More commonly, though, Hurley and Maxwell would socialise together at the Los Angeles home of well-connected actress and film producer Julia Verdin, who was ‘Queen’ of the Viles set, and is also seen in this 1996 picture, beaming and glossy.
Their playground was Verdin’s five-bed house in North Kings Road, West Hollywood, just by the fabled Chateau Marmont hotel, which had a terrace and hot tub overlooking Sunset Boulevard. It became a byword for gatherings which lasted until sunrise, attended by everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Robert de Niro.
And where Maxwell was, her boyfriend financier Jeffrey Epstein was too.
Indeed, I’m told that the convicted paedophile, found dead in his jail cell in 2019, was often in the kitchen of Verdin’s North Kings Road house when he and Maxwell hopped over to LA to party with fellow ‘Viles’.
It’s something which everybody involved has kept very quiet about since Maxwell’s stunning fall from grace – until now.
From left, Julia Verdin, Ghislaine Maxwell, Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Borg at a party in 1996
Borg at the same party in October with veteran actor John Hurt, who dated Ms Verdin
Ms Hurley, pictured with Singer Lisa B and Ms Verdin, was at the height of her fame following the London premiere of Four Weddings And A Funeral
A source who was also at these parties confirms Maxwell was at the heart of Hurley and Verdin’s social circle at North Kings Road, saying: ‘Ghislaine was a Vile. She wasn’t there all the time, but would come to the parties when she was in LA and would bring Jeffrey.
‘She and Julia were very close. Ghislaine seemed so nice and fun and Jeffrey was just a bit of a nobody. He was accepted as just another wealthy guy who wanted to hang out with the glamorous people. Ghislaine would drape herself over him. He was not very approachable or friendly. I remember him standing by the fridge in the kitchen in his black shirt and jeans.
‘Ghislaine and Liz knew each other very well, of course, because Liz had also been living in the house, and Liz will have known Jeffrey too because he was Ghislaine’s boyfriend.
‘By the night of that New York party in 1996, Ghislaine and Liz had been in each other’s lives for years.
‘My memory of Jeffrey is thinking that he was a kind of a background person; he didn’t totally seem to belong.
‘I definitely don’t think that Julia – or Liz – had any idea about what was going on with Jeffrey and Ghislaine.
‘It feels sickening that they were in the set now.’
A one-time member of the group, who prefers to remain anonymous, tells me: ‘Everyone came to the house. The whole “Viles” thing was just a code name for Brits in LA. I think Julia came up with it. It was a decadent party set, and life was all about having fun.
‘There was masses of booze and also very open cocaine use. Well, it was the 1990s! Basically it was a group of very pretty British girls and they would get all the Hollywood stars to come over and party with them.’
At the time of that 1996 picture, Hurley was at the height of her fame following the London premiere of Four Weddings And A Funeral 18 months earlier which she attended in ‘that dress’, the famous safety pin Versace number, with her then boyfriend Hugh Grant.
And by 1996 Maxwell was in a relationship with Epstein and had been for at least four years. Their sex crimes enterprise had already been established at the time of the photo, as revealed in Maxwell’s 2021 trial for sex trafficking.
In court Maria Farmer – now a painter and the first to make a complaint about Epstein – said she and her sister Annie, then aged 16, were recruited by Epstein and Maxwell in 1995. They were then sexually abused for four years.
None of this was known by the other person in the picture: It boy’ Sean Borg, a handsome British TV producer, presenter and manager who attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London and had a knack for collecting beautiful people.
Borg – who now splits his time between London and Palm Springs – helped to make Tamara Beckwith and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson famous, negotiating their stories with Tatler Magazine, before having his own successful media career.
It was Borg who revealed the link between Maxwell and Hurley, after posting that picture on Facebook last Thursday night.
As Borg explained in the caption, it was taken at a James Bond-themed party in New York in October 1996, hosted by two Brits: art gallerist, socialite and Green Shield stamps heir Tim Jefferies and socialite businessman Robert Hanson. Borg goes on: ‘At the height of her fame, Elizabeth Hurley mingled with us all night. I was obsessed with her beauty. As we posed for pictures, she asked: “Sean, does my hair look alright? I laughed: ‘Darling, are you kidding?! You are perfection.”
‘In one photo – Julia Verdin, Ghislaine Maxwell, Elizabeth Hurley and me – all part of the same crew. I remember the giggles and jokes . . . too naughty to post. Julia and Elizabeth had been friends for years – and so had Julia and Ghislaine.
‘Epstein was just another guest: arrogant but nothing suspicious. Ghislaine was charming, funny, all smiles, wearing her trademark rollneck flecked with gold. Who knew what the future held?’
‘Looking back, the smiles don’t read the same. I have pictures of Epstein, but they’re tucked away with the negatives and stacks of photos from my party-era archives when Julia and I led the social scene.
‘Jeffrey was often lukewarm toward me – which makes sense now, considering I knew nearly every showbiz journalist from here to Timbuktu. And I was never invited to [his] island, nor in his little black book [of contacts] – thank goodness.’
So how did Maxwell break her way into this glamorous orbit, and seemingly become so close to Hurley and Verdin?
Verdin’s father, Anthony, was an Oxford-based scientist who diversified into commercial analysis and the restaurant business, becoming a director of the Chelsea Arts Club, the centre of London’s best connected bohemians.
Julia Verdin seems to have got to know Maxwell in the mid-1980s. Maxwell was living at the family home, Headington Hill Hall just outside Oxford, and studied at Oxford University, while Verdin lived in the city. There are a number of pictures of them together at charity balls.
While in her Oxford sixth-form, Verdin befriended Hugh Grant – a couple of years her senior. Grant, an undergraduate at New College, Oxford, played opposite Verdin in a production of The Ideal Husband.
He later introduced her to his girlfriend, Hurley, who very soon became Verdin’s best friend.
After studying English and Drama at university in London, Verdin embarked on a part-time acting and modelling career, and had roles in the dramas Tenko and Howards’ Way.
She then was engaged as a producer on the 1987 film The Fourth Protocol. Based on the Frederick Forsyth novel, it was part-funded by the Syrian arms dealer Wafic Said, who stumped up half the budget because he loved the book.
It remains – 35 films later – Verdin’s highest-profile movie, and starred Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine.
There followed an 18-month love affair with actor Steven Berkoff, who met Verdin at a party thrown by Joan Collins. It did not survive Verdin’s leap to LA in 1992.
She then dated veteran actor John Hurt and carried on producing movies and throwing parties.
Life was sweet – she told an interviewer that she knew ‘1,000 people in Hollywood’.
She buzzed around in a new BMW and was seen lunching with Al Pacino.
A friend from this time tells me: ‘Julia had a whole wardrobe of Chanel suits. If she wore pearls, they were real. The same with diamonds.’
Caro Mack, Jeffrey Epstein and Ms Maxwell at an event in New York in 1995
Verdin herself told an interviewer: ‘I would say that I’m one of the more successful independent producers here. I’m in a position where distributors call me and ask me what I’m doing. They know I have good talent relationships and I’ve always been in budget and on time.’
‘Good talent relationships’ is something of an understatement: in the 1990s, she appears to have been the sun, and the celebrities the planets that spun around her and her LA home.
There, in the early hours of the night – or morning – you might find Robert de Niro chatting on the sofa, Christian Slater enjoying a drink, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Billy Zane holding court after a day filming their latest movie, Titanic.
The dress designer Elizabeth Emanuel often slept on the pullout sofa and others in the set were Brits who were making a life in Hollywood – such as Michael Caine’s daughter Natasha, the heiress Tamara Beckwith who went out with Sharon Stone’s brother at this time, socialite Tamara Yeardye (later Mellon, who took over at Jimmy Choo) and gorgeous blondes Birgit Cunningham and Normandie Keith.
Cunningham famously had a love affair with Kevin Costner – as did Julia Verdin.
Visitors to the house also included the singer Seal, actor Robert Downey Jr, and the late actor Michael Madsen.
Throughout, Verdin’s best friend Hurley was a constant fixture.
Hurley lived at the house for two years until 1995 when she relocated to the UK. (The word among the Viles was that her beloved Alsatian, Nico, had bitten someone, so she got out of town for a bit.)
Hurley had also had a not-very-discreet affair with actor Tom Sizemore, whom she had met on the set of the film Passenger 57, which both Sizemore and the boxer Gary Stretch later confirmed. Thankfully for Hurley, it didn’t seem to affect her romance with Hugh Grant.
When Hurley vacated North Kings Road, her room was taken over by Sean Borg.
Birgit Cunningham, who lived in the Verdin house at the same time as Hurley, remembered more parties than work.
In an interview, Cunningham – who was a secretary at the film studio Universal – said: ‘They were crazy days. I mean I have blonde hair, a British accent and an American passport. I couldn’t really go wrong in LA.
‘The whole scene is fuelled by coke. There was so much of it, taken so openly, that at first I thought it was legal. When you got to a party it was like: “Hi, come in, have a drink, have a line…” ’
‘I did as much as anybody, but because I had to get up for work the next day I found that lifestyle harder and harder to deal with. I decided to come off it altogether, but then when I needed something to pick me up I turned to vodka.’
Eventually, Cunningham got sober after her drinking became problematic.
Verdin, too, also turned her back on the partying.
My source says: ‘It was just a little bubble – four maybe five years – and then people started to develop problems or to get sober.’
What nobody understood at the time was that the drinking and drug-taking was the least of their misdemeanours. For unbeknown to them, one of the ‘crew’ was facilitating a life of genuine depravity.
In December 2021, Maxwell sentenced to 20 years after being convicted by a jury in US federal court on five sex-trafficking-related counts: one of sex trafficking a minor, one of transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three of conspiracy to commit felonies.
Verdin is clearly appalled by the association now. Contacted this week she said: ‘I haven’t seen her in years. I don’t have anything to say.’
As a curious postscript, it ought to be noted that one of Verdin’s most recent projects is a film about sex trafficking. Lost Girls: Angie’s Story came out in 2020 and told the story of a girl who escapes from a sex-trafficking ring.
Notes posted on the website of Verdin’s production company, Rough Diamond, say: ‘Sex trafficking is so out of control now that it has become the second largest criminal activity in the US alone.
‘Education and awareness are desperately needed to prevent future entrapment of innocent minors. Anyone, regardless of their age, sex, race or demographic can fall victim to traffickers, which is why it is so vital for our communities to understand the reality of this dangerous epidemic.’
That Verdin had an encounter with the most notorious trafficker of children in the modern age isn’t mentioned.
