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Biography
There are many who consider Catherine
Zeta Jones to have been canny, manipulative and, eventually, undeniable
in a rapid rise to the top. In fact, her passage to Hollywood stardom
has been anything but steady. Her career choices have, on occasion, been
terribly flawed.
Her big breaks have been hilariously,
fabulously fortunate. And, being as she began her education and career
in entertainment back in the mid-Seventies, it's actually all taken a
very long time.
Catherine Zeta Jones (Catherine Fair and Zeta Jones being the names of
her grandmothers) was born in Swansea on the 25th of September, 1969,
growing up in the now-chic Mumbles area, a beautiful sweep of wooded
coastline. Her father, Dai, managed a confectionery factory, turning
him, in young Catherine's eyes, into something of a Willy Wonka figure.
Her mother, Pat, was Irish and a seamstress by trade. She commented,
upon Catherine's birth, that she looked like a frog. Catherine had one
older brother, David A Jones, and one younger, Lyndon, both of whom now
aid her in her work with her production company, Milkwood Films (Swansea
also being the former home of Dylan Thomas, author of Under Milk Wood).
From the age of 4, Catherine wanted to entertain, to be the centre of
attention. She'd prance around using the spout of her grandma's kettle
as a microphone. Very soon, she was onstage, performing with an amateur
troupe organised by the local Catholic Church. Her singing voice,
though, was once severely threatened. Falling sick with a viral
infection that impaired her breathing, she had to undergo a tracheotomy
(the scar is still visible today). Consequently, she missed a lot of
school, and was sent to a small private establishment to catch up.
But, though she was bright, academic work was not Catherine's calling.
Studying tap and ballet, she continued with the amateur troupe, starring
in Annie, then as Tallulah in Bugsy Malone. This latter part was wholly
appropriate, Catherine being perfect as the super-sexy vamp. She says
that even at 12 she looked 22, and would go to clubs with the blessing
of her trusting parents.
When she was 14, along came her first
break. A production starring Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees arrived in
Swansea, one of its attractions being that, wherever it went, it
recruited local children to form the chorus. Catherine auditioned
successfully, so successfully that the producers quickly cast her in a
touring production of The Pyjama Game. By 15, she had dropped out of
school, received her Actor's Guild card, and moved to London.
Soon Catherine enjoyed a ludicrous slice of good luck. Signing on for
the chorus of 42nd Street, she became second understudy to the lead. One
evening both the lead and the first understudy were struck down by
illness, leaving the way open for Catherine, then aged 17, to star as
Peggy Sawyer. Coincidentally, her efforts were witnessed by the show's
producer, David Merrick, who'd never attended any of the previous
performances. So impressed was he that he gave her the lead full-time,
and she reprised the role eight times a week for nearly two years.
After 42nd Street, Catherine took a sabbatical in France, doing little
work other than starring in Philippe De Broca's Scheherazade. Here, in
the title role, aided by a genie from 1990's London, she met all the
great heroes of her legendary dreams (including Vitorio Gassman as
Sinbad), as well as engaging in a couple of nude scenes that have since
made the film much sought-after.
Returning to the UK after a year, she
found immediate fame for her part as Mariette Larkin, David Jason's
daughter in The Darling Buds Of May. After Only Fools And Horses, Jason
was perhaps the country's most popular TV star and here, as loveable
rogue Pop, with his rowdy family and neat catchphrase "Perrrfic"
he topped the ratings again with these warm, Kent-set adaptations of the
novels of H.E Bates.
With the show such a howling success, and Catherine its sexiest star by
some considerable distance, the tabloids went into a feeding frenzy. She
was hounded wherever she went, at one point driving her car into a
lamp-post while trying to escape their seedy attentions. Indeed, she was
hounded even if she didn't go anywhere, once calling the police to check
out a van parked outside her house and discovering it to be packed with
surveillance equipment.
She was connected to every well-known man
who wandered into wide-angle lens distance of her, including Blue Peter
presenter John Leslie, actor Angus MacFayden (star of Braveheart and the
excellent Titus), to whom she was actually engaged in the mid-Nineties
and, later, film producer Jon Peters, ex-hubbie of Barbra Streisand.
While finding fame on TV with Darling
Buds, Catherine also continued to seek success in her other areas of
expertise, onstage and in music. She appeared in a production of Under
Milk Wood, directed by Anthony
Hopkins and co-starring Tom Jones, and would also turn up (after
Darling Buds) in a English National Opera production of Kurt Weill's
Street Scene (she's on the CD, singing Moon Faced, Starry Eyed, if you
can find it).
There was also an attempt at a solo
singing career. Jeff Wayne, who'd had a massive hit in the late
Seventies with the concept LP War Of The Worlds, was making a comeback
with a similar take on the story of Spartacus. Catherine won the role of
Spartacus's wife Palene, both singing and narrating (though the main
narrator was Anthony
Hopkins, popping up again as Marcus Crassus). Taken from Spartacus,
Catherine's first single was For All Time, and there were high hopes.
However, Spartacus was not a success and consequently the single reached
only Number 36. In 1994, Catherine followed this with True Love Ways, a
duet with David Essex (coincidentally the star of Wayne's War Of The
Worlds), which stalled at Number 38. Finally, and in desperation,
Catherine changed her image, bowing to tabloid demands and garbing
herself in rubber and fishnets. It didn't work. Neither In The Arms Of
Love nor I Can't Help Myself were hits.
Catherine's failure to achieve pop stardom mattered not a jot. By the
time she called it a day, she'd already sown the seeds of her later
Hollywood stardom by moving to America and scoring both experience and
notable roles. It was difficult when she first moved to Los Angeles. She
knew no one but film editor Petra Van Oelffen who was at the time in
Europe. Thankfully, Petra let Catherine live in her house in the
Palisades, and the search for work was on (sadly, her friendship with
Van Oelffen would later be severely strained when, having broken her
ankle in an accident while Catherine was driving, Petra sued for $1.6
million).
Having appeared in Eric Idle's profoundly unamusing Splitting Heirs, as
well as historical dramas Christopher Columbus (with Marlon Brando and
Benicio Del Toro), The Return Of The Native and Catherine Cookson's The
Cinder Path (as the promiscuous and casually unfaithful Victoria
Chapman) Catherine also tried out contemporary drama with Blue Juice, a
UK surfing flick co-starring Sean Pertwee and Ewan McGregor.
But it was the bigger American
productions that would break her. First she starred as Catherine The
Great, the notorious Russian Empress, plotter and seducer who rose to
power in 1762. Then came The Phantom, where she was Sala, sexy leader of
a female fighter squadron. And then there was Titanic.
Many careers were made by James Cameron's epic Titanic. Sadly, Catherine
wasn't in his version, starring instead (in the Kate Winslet role) in a
TV version released a year earlier and starring George C. Scott and, er,
Marilu Henner. Yet amazingly, even this version of Titanic was good
enough to have a career-making effect, for Catherine's performance was
seen and admired by none other than Steven Spielberg. At that time,
Spielberg was busying himself in pre-production for The Mask Of Zorro,
and recommended Catherine to director Martin Campbell. He liked her -
she was in.
Attending what she called the Zorro
boot-camp, Catherine spent two hours per day dancing, two hours learning
to ride, two hours practising sword-fighting and another two in dialect
classes. The training paid off, as the critics found her scintillating
as Elena, the feisty long-lost daughter of Anthony Hopkins' aged Zorro.
It should be noted that, reintroduced to the woman he directed in Under
Milkwood and who had co-narrated Spartacus, Hopkins did not remember
her. After Mask Of Zorro, he'd not forget her in a hurry.
Made by Zorro, Catherine was summoned to Rome to be interviewed by Sean
Connery, then looking to cast his co-star in Entrapment. Charmed, he
took her on as Virginia Baker, the insurance fraud agent who tracks art
thief Connery, then aids him in his most audacious crime yet. One scene,
where she used all her balletic suppleness to creep through a
pick-up-sticks mess of laser alarms, sent millions of male pulses
racing. After this, she starred with Liam Neeson in a remake of The
Haunting. The film was wretched, but Catherine stood out again as Theo,
the lesbian medium originally played by Claire Bloom.
In the meantime, there was marriage. In August 1998, Catherine met
Michael Douglas, 25 years her senior, at the Deauville Film Festival.
They began dating seriously in March, 1999, with Catherine reportedly
sticking to her mother's advice of "Show them nothing!" by
keeping him waiting for a full nine months - good therapy for a fellow
reputed to be a recovering sex addict. Romantically, the couple were
engaged on New Year's Eve at the turn of the millennium, in Aspen,
Colorado. A child, Dylan Michael (that Swansea poet again!) would be
born in August, 2000.
Plenty of controversy surrounded the couple's wedding in late 2000.
They'd been paid $900,000 by OK Magazine for exclusive pictures of the
newly born Dylan. Now they accepted a further $1.5 million for exclusive
shots of the wedding, a helpful amount as the proceedings at the New
York Plaza would cost $1.8 million, including $10,000 for the four-foot
cake. Unfortunately, Hello Magazine got hold of pictures and published,
the Douglases attempting to take out an immediate injunction.
Eventually, they sued for damages and the case stretched on till 2003,
when they were awarded $23,000 (OK! got $1.6 million). Even then it
wasn't over, with Hello! deciding to appeal.
Now financially secure for life (it's
said Catherine's pre-nup with Douglas gives her $3.2 million for every
year of the marriage), she continued to win prime roles. In Traffic,
which Douglas had turned down then accepted when Catherine was sent a
re-write, she was superb as Helena Ayala, the dealer's wife who,
innocent at first, comes to organise assassinations and negotiate
cocaine deals. Many wondered how she missed out on an Oscar nomination
(though she did get one for a Golden Globe).
No worries for Cat though, as her next
role was in the hit rom-com America's Sweethearts, as Gwen Harrison,
whose relationship with fellow superstar John Cusack breaks down,
leaving publicist Billy
Crystal to control the story and Julia
Roberts (as Gwen's sister) to cause maximum confusion. The film was
a huge hit in the States, Catherine's fourth hit in three years, after
Zorro, Entrapment and Traffic. Catherine herself didn't help the cause
much. In an incredible TV botch-job, she went on the David Letterman
Show to promote the movie and, in a moment of unparalleled madness
referred to David as Jay (the name of his arch rival Jay Leno!)
Now a major Hollywood player, Catherine returned to her musical roots
with Chicago, high-kicking and seductively squirming as Velma Kelly, a
1920s stage star in competition with newcomer Roxy Hart (Renee Zellweger).
Having killed her husband and sister, whom she caught in flagrante,
she's followed to Murderer's Row by Zellweger, who's topped a lover who
failed to make her a star. Both are represented by dodgy lawyer Richard
Gere, and both need him to make them media darlings to escape their
plight.
The movie, taking its lead from Moulin
Rouge, was flashy and sexy, with Catherine pulling out all the stops to
top Nicole
Kidman's efforts, as well as those of Bebe Neuwirth, who'd scored a
huge hit as Velma in the latest Broadway production. Glamorous, stylish
and confident, she made full use of her stage experience, winning a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar for her efforts. The film itself was a huge
hit, taking $170 million at the US box office on a budget of $45
million.
As if to confirm her newfound status, Catherine added her voice to the
all-star animation Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas, her name appearing
on the credits alongside such heavyweights as Brad
Pitt and Michelle
Pfeiffer. And then - for all "real" stars must have this
on their CV - she teamed up with the Coen Brothers for Intolerable
Cruelty, playing Marylin Rexroth, a gold-digger who hopes to gain
control of her rich and cheating husband's fortune.
Foiled by invincible divorce lawyer George
Clooney, she then shocks him by hiring him to forge an unbreakable
pre-nup for her next marriage, to bashful Texan oil billionaire Billy
Bob Thornton. Clooney then looks on in admiration as she reveals the
magnificent scope of her deceit, and attempts to win this dangerous
woman for his own. Intolerable Cruelty was smart and sassy, a real
throwback to the Fifties, and it showed George and Catherine to be one
of the best-looking couples in recent memory. Off-screen,
2003 would see Catherine co-host the Nobel Peace Prize concert, and also
give birth to her second child, daughter Carys. The next year would see
her back in court, this time giving evidence against one Dawnette Knight
who was accused of stalking and threatening Catherine over the previous
two years. The defence claimed that Knight simply had a "girlish
crush" on Michael Douglas. The prosecution, though, said Knight had
threatened to chop Catherine up "like Sharon Tate" and
"feed her to the dogs". Bail was set at $1 million as the case
stretched into 2005.
Onscreen, 2004 saw Catherine appear in two major productions. First, her
Zorro benefactor Steven Spielberg signed her up for The Terminal. This
saw Tom
Hanks as an Eastern European whose passport and visa become invalid
after a coup in his home country, leaving him stranded at JFK. Unable to
step onto American soil, unwilling to fly home, he's forced to make a
life for himself in the airport (as really happened to Merhan Nasseri in
Paris in 1988), making a number of new friends, among them Catherine, an
agreeably neurotic, weak-willed flight attendant who's having an affair
with a married Michael Nouri and realises she can turn to the simple,
unspoilt Hanks for advice.
Next, having won acclaim in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and co-starred
with Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty, she reunited with them both (as
well as Julia
Roberts and Brad
Pitt) for Ocean's Twelve. Here the new Rat Pack were forced to carry
out a daring robbery in Europe in order to pay back casino boss Andy
Garcia the money they stole from him in Ocean's Eleven. Catherine would
play Isabel Lahiri, an Interpol cop on their trail, who coincidentally
happens to be an old flame of Brad
Pitt's character. The pair thus had the chance to seriously smoulder.
Though she had usually played alngside major stars, Catherine could now
boast that (Intolerable Cruelty excepted) her last 9 movies had made
money, most of them a lot of money. She was now resolutely of the A-list
and, in order to cement that position, she returned to the scene of her
first big hit with The Legend Of Zorro for a paycheck of $10 million.
Here she and Antonio
Banderas's Zorro are now married, but she leaves him and he descends
into drunkenness and conflict with a young son who does not know his
illustrious past. To redeem himself, he must both win Catherine back and
foil plotters who're trying to stop California from becoming a state of
the Union.
Many believed that now she'd reached the top Catherine would settle back
in Malibu and fight to maintain her position in the Hollywood hierarchy.
They were surprised when she set about building a new home back in
Swansea and, through her Milkwood production company, began to make
films in Wales. The first would be Coming Out, where gay West End
performer Alan Cumming takes over a near-bankrupt Welsh rugby club after
his father, their coach dies. Catherine herself would play a local
hairdresser who falls for Cummings' brother. Catherine
is sometimes referred to as a prima donna but, a hometown girl who
enjoys rugby, boxing and a few beers, she has her head screwed on far
too tightly to care about petty bickering. As well as sinking her money
into Milkwood, she also uses her fame and funds - like Douglas - to help
worthy causes, including young adults with cerebral palsy and the
International Centre For Missing And Exploited Children. With Douglas
taking on a public role as Hollywood Ambassador For Worldwide Decency,
we can expect Catherine to be right by his side - or perhaps right
behind him, kicking his ass forward. She's that kind of girl - both
lucky and deserving, she gets things done. ~ Dominic Wills |
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