truly happen overnight, and Zeta-Jones had been acting professionally
for well over a decade, becoming equally reputed for her work
in theater, television, and film, before Zorro made her an international
sensation.
Giving the lie to the darkly exotic cast of her features, Zeta-Jones
was born and raised in Swansea, Wales, a distinction she shares
with famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The only daughter of working-class
parents — her Irish mother was a seamstress and her Welsh
father managed a candy factory — she became an accomplished
singer and dancer at a young age, largely as a result of her
involvement with the local Catholic congregation's amateur performing
troupe. Her first acting assignment was playing everyone's favorite
li'l orphan in a local production of Annie, and by the time
she was 11, the talented youngster had also essayed the role
of Talullah in Bugsy Malone. Just three years later, a touring
musical featuring onetime Monkee Mickey Dolenz stopped in Swansea,
and 14-year-old Catherine auditioned for a spot in the chorus.
The show's producers took a shine to her poise and presence
and recruited her for a touring production of The Pajama Game.
| Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her extensive experience,
the talented teen acquired her first actor's guild
card at the age of 15, and subsequently relocated
to London to pursue acting full-time. It took her
just two years to wind up in the lead role of a
West End production of the musical 42nd Street.
Originally she was merely the second understudy
to the show's star, but one fateful evening both
the star and the first understudy bowed out and
Zeta-Jones stepped up to deliver a showstopping
turn as chorus girl Peggy Sawyer. Coincidentally,
that happened to be the first performance attended
by the show's producer, who immediately insisted
that she be made the star. For the rest of the musical's
run, Zeta-Jones did eight shows a week; after it
closed, she took a much-needed sabbatical and traveled
to France. During the year that followed, she appeared
in her debut feature film as the title character
of French director Philippe De Broca's Scheherazade.
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| Returning to England in 1991, the budding
starlet signed to appear as the eldest daughter of a rowdy
farm family in the Yorkshire TV series The Darling Buds
of May, adapted from the novel by H.E. Bates. The series
was a smash, and Zeta-Jones became a U.K. superstar and
a favorite subject of the infamous British tabloids. During
the series' enormously successful three-year run, its
star made her first inroads into Hollywood with a prominent
role in an episode of ABC's The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
and a (thankfully) brief appearance in the little-lamented
box-office bust Christopher Columbus: The Discovery. She
also carried on an extended relationship with American
producer Jon Peters, who eventually proposed marriage;
daunted by the prospect of finding her career identity
subsumed in the label "Hollywood wife," she
turned him down. After Darling Buds of May wound down,
the ever-industrious Zeta-Jones made a heralded return
to the stage in an English National Opera production of
Street Scenes. |
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| When the intense pressure of having
the tabloids dog her every move wore down the realm's
most eligible sex symbol, she decided it was time
for a change of scenery, post haste. As she later
confided to one interviewer, "The intrusion
into my life got so bad I actually drove my car
into a lamppost trying to get away from paparazzi
one day. It was at that moment that I decided to
flee Britain and live in America." Though crossing
the pond proved a simple adjustment, Zeta-Jones
quickly discovered that her U.K. superstardom was
not directly translatable into Hollywood fame and
fortune. Television proved more open to her gifts
at first, and in 1994 she made a strong impression
in the lead role of CBS's Hallmark Hall of Fame
presentation of Return of the Native; the following
year she shone in the title role of the miniseries
Catherine the Great. Somewhat fittingly, however, |
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| it was not until she undertook what can
perhaps best be described as the "Kate Winslet role"
in the 1996 miniseries Titanic that her ship truly came
in. A certain viewer by the name of Steven Spielberg thought
her performance was nothing short of dynamite, and he
immediately phoned up director Martin Campbell to recommend
the fiery Welsh beauty for the female lead in The Mask
of Zorro, to which Spielberg was attached as producer.
Suffice it to say that when Steven Spielberg speaks, Hollywood
listens — Zeta-Jones took the role and ran with it,
and Zorro was a hit with critics and audiences alike.
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In 1999, the sultry actress co-starred in Entrapment, a romantic
thriller in which she and Sean Connery played art thieves
attempting to pull off the ultimate heist; and tackled a role
opposite Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting, director
Jan de Bont's remake of the horror classic The Haunting of
Hill House. She wrapped filming on High Fidelity, Steven Frears'
romantic comedy based on the novel by Nick Hornby; and she
has also signed to star in the sci-fi thriller The Tenth Victim
for director Lee Tamahori.
Zeta-Jones departed the ranks of the unwed in November 2000,
marrying actor Michael Douglas; the couple welcomed their
first child, a son named Dylan Michael, the previous August.
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