Women's History

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Born: September 25, 1969 in Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, Great Britain
Nationality: British
Occupation: actor, singer

Catherine Zeta-Jones won her first big role as Antonio Banderas's sword-wielding love interest in 1998's The Mask of Zorro, and her performance won her legions of fans. The next year, she was even hotter as Sean Connery's partner in crime in Entrapment. Though Zeta-Jones was relegated to a few minor parts mainly in television movie and miniseries in America, she was not new to the industry. "I know some people consider me a novice, but that's simply not true," she remarked to Louis B. Hobson in the Calgary Sun. "I've been in the business for 15 years." Her dark, exotic looks notwithstanding, Zeta-Jones was born and raised in Wales, and after getting her start as a child actor in Great Britain, she became a sex symbol there as a teenager for her racy role in the television series The Darling Buds of May. Even after the show went off the air, the tabloid coverage continued to overwhelm her. She found that her fame was preventing her from earning decent parts at home, so she ventured to Hollywood to find work as a serious actor, only to find herself yet another unknown. Once she turned on the glamour, though, doors began to open.

Zeta-Jones was born on September 25, 1969, in the seaside town of Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, Great Britain, and grew up in the district of Mumbles, which used to be a small fishing area and now brims with pubs and nightlife. Her Welsh father managed a candy factory and her Irish mother worked as a seamstress. Her name is a combination of her grandmothers' names; one was named Catherine, and the other, Zeta, was named after a ship that Zeta-Jones's great-grandfather sailed in from Swansea to Greece. At age four, Zeta-Jones began taking tap dancing lessons, and soon, she began singing and dancing with her Catholic church's amateur performing troupe. By age six, she obtained a special permit to allow her to work professionally in the theater. Her father used to drive her around to clubs where she would dance and do impersonations.

After getting her start as the lead in a local production of Annie at age 11, Zeta-Jones was playing Talullah in Bugsy Malone by age 13. At age 14, she landed a spot in the chorus of a production starring Mickey Dolenz, formerly of the 1960s pop group the Monkees. After this, the show's producers asked her to join the tour of The Pajama Game. Zeta-Jones had her first actor's guild card by age 15 and soon moved to London in order to act full-time. Within two years, she was hired as the second understudy for the lead character, Peggy Sawyer, in a West End production of 42nd Street.

One night, neither the lead nor the first understudy in 42nd Street could take the stage, and Zeta-Jones brought the house down. As it happened, it was the first night that the show's producer was in attendance and he was so pleased with her performance that he demanded she be recast as the star. Subsequently, Zeta-Jones appeared in eight shows a week for the rest of the play's run. When it closed, she took a hiatus and went to France in the late 1980s. In 1990, she saw her feature film debut as the title character in Sheherazade (also titled Les 1001 Nuits) by French director by Phillipe De Broca.

When she returned to Britain in 1991, Zeta-Jones won a part in a television series called The Darling Buds of May, which was adapted from a novel by H.E. Bates. She played the scandalous daughter of a rambunctious 1950s farming family, and when the series became a hit, she found herself propelled into the ranks of celebrity. The infamous British tabloids descended upon her. "My whole life changed overnight," Zeta-Jones commented to Hobson in the Calgary Sun. "Suddenly, photographers were following me everywhere and journalists were going through my garbage to try to get some kind of story about me." They trailed her relentlessly, snapping pictures as she hung out her laundry or sunbathed topless. After The Darling Buds of May went off the air, she was in a stage production of Street Scenes by the English National Opera. The press continued to hound her, though, and in an incident eerily similar to that of the late Princess Diana, Zeta-Jones slammed her car into a lamp post as she tried to outrun paparazzi.

Throughout the three-year run of her television series, Zeta-Jones edged her way into Hollywood as well, appearing in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and a small part in the film Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, both in 1992. However, she was still not finding the same opportunities as her young British contemporaries, such as Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham Carter, Cate Blanchett, and Emily Watson. To pursue her career and also to escape the constant torment from the tabloids, Zeta-Jones decided to relocate to America.

Once in Hollywood, Zeta-Jones found that her total lack of fame in America hindered her opportunities. Part of the problem may have been her image. As she noted to Hobson in the Calgary Sun, "There was a time when I used to dress myself down and purposely try to look plain and frumpy. I thought I was supposed to look as if I'd spent the night sleeping under a bridge in order that people would take me seriously as an actress." Once she added a bit of glitz, though, as she had before, Zeta-Jones found work. She was a standout in the 1994 television movie The Return of the Native, and also hooked the lead in a German version of Catherine the Great the following year.

Zeta-Jones got her big break, though, after appearing as a passenger in the 1996 CBS miniseries Titanic. Steven Spielberg, who was producing The Mask of Zorro at the time, saw the series and took note of her striking looks. Within two days after the program aired, he called her for a meeting. Afterward, he suggested to director Martin Campbell that she be cast as the lead. "It was weird driving up there in my little rent-a-car and meeting Mr. Spielberg," Zeta-Jones remarked in an Entertainment Weekly interview. "It really was one of those things where you think 'God, it does happen sometimes.'" Zeta-Jones turned many heads as the swashbuckling Elena, opposite male stars Antonio Banderas as young Zorro and Anthony Hopkins—also from Wales and who once directed Zeta-Jones in a London play—as old Zorro. For her role, she trained with fencing instructor Bob Anderson, who also taught legendary actor Errol Flynn.

In early 1999, Zeta-Jones saw her popularity skyrocket even more with her role in Entrapment, costarring Sean Connery. Zeta-Jones held her own on screen with Connery as they played a pair of thieves who team up for a big art heist. Given their age difference (she was 28 and he was 67 when the film was made), there is a romantic tension throughout the picture which many critics found too unbelievable. Despite the mixed reviews, many in the media gushed over Zeta-Jones because of her sultry good looks and stunning figure. In the following year she appeared in the crime drama, Traffic, and she was seen in America's Sweethearts in 2001.

Zeta-Jones, who lived for a while in Los Angeles with her brothers, began dating actor Michael Douglas in the spring of 1999. They became engaged on New Year's Eve of that year. She gave birth to their son, Dylan, on August 8, 2000. On November 18, 2000, the two actors tied the knot in a private ceremony in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel. The lavish ceremony reportedly cost the couple about $2 million.

In 1998 and again in 2001 People proclaimed Zeta-Jones among the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World, although the five-foot, eight-inch star denies wearing many cosmetics, noting to Samantha Dunn in In Style, "I came out of the womb wearing makeup ... Now I don't wear [much] makeup in the day really." Even on camera, Zeta-Jones hesitates to cover a one-and-a-half inch tracheotomy scar on her neck that was incurred as an infant when she caught a viral disease and suffered breathing problems. "I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have this scar," she commented in People. She admits to a fear of developing middle-age spread and practices yoga and uses cardiovascular workouts and weights to keep in shape. She claims that her beauty routine includes showering with honey and salt in order to moisturize and exfoliate, and says she conditions her hair with beer and honey.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Calgary Sun, November 22, 1998, p. 11; April 28, 1999, p. 46.
• Dallas Morning News, May 19, 1999, p. 3E.
• Entertainment Weekly, August 14, 1998, p. 49; December 25, 1998, p. 46; May 7, 1999, p. 39.
• Glamour, August 1998, p. 220.
• GQ, July 1998, p. 170.
• In Style, July 1998, p. 89.
• Los Angeles, August 1998, p. 42.
• Newsday, May 10, 1999, p. B2.
• People, May 11, 1998, p. 150; August 3, 1998, p. 114; May 14, 2001.
• Premiere, July 1998, p. 82.
• Toronto Sun, May 1, 1999, p. 24.
• Variety, June 29, 1998, p. 37; April 26, 1999, p. 43.

Online

• "Catherine Zeta-Jones," Internet Movie Database web site, http://us.imdb.com (June 24, 1999).

Source: Newsmakers 1999, Gale Group. 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003.