Catherine Zeta Jones
In the UK Catherine Zeta Jones first shot to
fame as Mariette in H.E. Bates Darling Buds Of May, which
was a very successful TV series. But Catherine Zeta-Jones'
career began on stage in childhood. She often performed at
friends and family functions when she was younger. She was
part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe before
she was 10 and made her professional acting debut when she
played the lead in Annie, a production at Swansea's Grand
Theater. She also starred in a version of Bugsy Malone. At
14, Mickey Dolenz - of the Monkeys pop group - stopped by
the Grand Theater in Swansea to audition her for The Pyjama
Game and she ended up on the Pyjama game tour. By 1987 Zeta-Jones
was starring in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer in the West End.
She was cast in the leading role after Peggy Sawyer, the billed
actress, and Sawyer's understudy fell ill. She also played
Mae Jones in a Kurt Weill opera called Street Scene with the
English National Opera. Once the show closed, the actress
traveled to France, where she received the lead role in French
director Philippe de Broca's 1001 Nights (also known as Sheherazade),
her feature film debut.
Her Welsh, exotic looks, along with her singing
and dancing ability, suggested a promising future, and after
the hugely successful role, as Mariette in The Darling Buds
of May that gave her celebrity status, she continued to find
more moderate success with a number of television projects,
including The Return of the Native (1994) and the mini-series
Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting
Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and
John Cleese.
In 1996, she was cast as the evil aviatrix "Sala"
in the action film, The Phantom, based on the comic created
by Lee Falk. Her character did her best to kill Billy Zane's
Phantom, while assisting villain Xander Drax, played by Treat
Williams, in taking over the world with a weapon of doom.
The following year, she starred in the CBS mini-series Titanic,
which also starred Tim Curry and Peter Gallagher. Steven Spielberg,
who noted her performance in the mini-series, recommended
her to Martin Campbell, the director of The Mask of Zorro.
Catherine Zeta-Jones subsequently landed a lead role in the
film, alongside fellow Welsh compatriot Anthony Hopkins and
Antonio Banderas. She learned dancing, riding, sword-fighting
and took part in dialect classes to play her role as Elena.
Commenting on her performance, Variety noted, "Zeta-Jones
is bewitchingly lovely as the center of everyone's attention,
and she throws herself into the often physical demands of
her role with impressive grace." In 1999, she co-starred
with Sean Connery in the film Entrapment, and alongside Liam
Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting.
In 2000, she starred in the critically acclaimed
Traffic with, her then future, husband Michael Douglas. Traffic
earned praise from the press and the Dallas Observer called
the movie "a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, a
beautiful and brutal work". Zeta-Jones' performance earned
her her first Golden Globe nomination, as Best Actress in
a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.
In 2002, Zeta-Jones was Velma Kelly in the film
Chicago. Velma Kelly is a glamorous Chicago jazz stage performer
who finds herself in prision after killing her sister and
her husband. Catherine's performance critically acclaimed
by the press and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stated, "Zeta-Jones
makes a wonderfully statuesque and bitchy saloon goddess."
Catherine Zeta Jones won an Academy Award for Best Supporting
Actress for her performance.
In 2003, she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend
of the Seven Seas opposite Brad Pitt, as well as starring
in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was
in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to
Ocean's Eleven. In 2005, she reprised her role as Elena in
The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. In 2007,
she starred in the romantic comedy No Reservations, a remake
of the German film Mostly Martha. She starred in a biopic
about legendary magician Harry Houdini: Death Defying Acts,
directed by Gillian Armstrong and alongside with Guy Pearce
and Saoirse Ronan. In 2009, she is going to hit screens with
romantic comedy The Rebound, a film by Bart Freundlich, in
which she plays a 40 something mother of two that falls in
love with a younger man, played by Justin Bartha. Next, she
has the look to appear as Egyptian queen Cleopatra in the
3d Musical Cleo! directed by fellow director Steven Soderbergh.
As a Welshman I am really proud of Catherine...
Tim Rees
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