'Retired' Liz is back acting

Liz Hurley announced a new film role today - three weeks after saying she had quit acting for the sake of her son

She is to appear with Lucy Liu in the Hollywood action comedy The Cleaner.

Only last month Hurley said she was putting her acting career on hold to spend more time with three-year-old son Damian.

"I don't want to leave my son for such long periods of time. A movie is three months and I've decided not to do that until he's older," she said.

"He holds my face and just says, 'Mummy, I'm obsessed with you!' It is the most enchanting time and I just refuse to miss any of it."

But details of her latest film were announced at the Cannes Film Festival.

The £16 million movie stars US comic Cedric the Entertainer as a janitor who develops amnesia and is fooled into believing he is an undercover agent on the trail of an international arms ring.

Charlie's Angels star Liu is the real agent who falls for him.

Hurley, who turns 40 next month, will play a femme fatale who tries to seduce the hapless janitor for her own ends.

The film starts production this summer and will be released next year.

The last movie project Hurley launched at Cannes was The Method, a thriller in which she had the starring role. It went straight to video.

Her other recent films, Serving Sara and Double Whammy, were flops.

But she did have some success with roles in the Austin Powers movies and Bedazzled.

The Estee Lauder "spokesmodel" recently branched out into fashion design with the launch of her own beachwear collection.