Hutton: 'Jeremy Saved My Life'
by JD Heyman, Us Weekly
March 19, 2001
[Webmaster's Note: Lauren Hutton has recovered from her motorcycle accident last fall and has been granting a number of interviews recently, recounting it and paying tribute to Jeremy for helping to save her life. The latest appears in Us Weekly, which is excerpted below.]
Hutton has finally spoken about the motorcycle crash that occurred about 30 miles east of Las Vegas last year.
"I shouldn't have lived," she said last week on "Good Morning America," revealing for the first time that she survived only because of actors Dennis Hopper and Jeremy Irons, her friends and fellow bikers.
The crash happened as the three celebrities were participating in a 100-mile group ride across the Nevada desert to celebrate the establishment of a new branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas, which is scheduled to open this fall with an exhibition called "The Art of the Motorcycle."
Hutton was admittedly ill-prepared for the trip. Anticipating a smaller group of cyclists, she had neglected to bring a helmet with a full face visor to protect her from the elements and had misplaced her leather biking jacket. At the beginning of the journey, Hutton joined Hopper and Irons at the head of the pack, but amid the dust and roar generated by more than 120 motorcycles, she soon lost sight of her companions and fell back into the crowd.
After about two and a half hours of riding, Hutton pulled off the road in the rugged Lake Mead National Recreation area, where she found Irons and Hopper also taking a break. Hopper provided Hutton with an extra jacket he had brought along, and Irons produced a spare helmet with a full face visor and ordered her to put it on. "Thank God, Jeremy saw that I had tears coming out of my eyes from the wind hitting me," said Hutton. "[It] saved my life."
Those two "miracles," as Hutton calls them, would prove crucial minutes later. As the trio rode off together, Hutton sped around a curve at about 100 miles per hour, and went into a harrowing skid.
Hopper and Irons, riding close by, watched the accident in horror. "She got into the gravel at the side of the road," said Irons, "then went into a slow skid, then finally hit the bank and flew in the air." "I skidded 170 feet on my face," says the woman who has graced the cover of Vogue a record 25 times. "But thank God it was [on] my visor, so thank you, Jeremy." ("Jeremy's just grateful she's alive," Irons's spokeswoman told US Weekly. "He doesn't think of himself as a hero.")