Catherine Zeta-Jones

Biography:

Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones CBE was born in Wales on September 25, 1969. Acknowledged for her adaptability, she has won multiple awards, including as the Tony, British, and Academy Awards. Because of her achievements in movies and humanitarian aid, she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2010.

Zeta-Jones was reared in Swansea and had always wanted to be an actress. She performed in children’s parts in the West End runs of Annie and Bugsy Malone. After pursuing her studies in musical theater at the Arts Educational Schools in London, she made her stage debut in a production of 42nd Street in 1987. In the 1990 French-Italian film 1001 Nights, she made her screen debut. She later achieved more fame as a regular on the British television series The Darling Buds of May (1991–1993).

Devastated by her stereotypical portrayal as the stereotypically attractive female in British movies, Zeta-Jones moved to Los Angeles. Her sexy performances helped her make a name for herself in Hollywood; examples include the heist thriller Entrapment (1999) and the action feature The Mask of Zorro (1998).

Zeta-Jones won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the musical Chicago (2002), where she played a violent singer after taking on a spiteful role as a pregnant mother in Traffic (2000). For the most of the decade, she acted in high-profile movies, such as the romantic comedy No Reservations (2007), the heist movie Ocean’s Twelve (2004), the comedy The Terminal (2004), and the dark comedy Intolerable Cruelty (2003).

After taking on roles in smaller-scale pictures, her workload decreased. She went back to the stage and won a Tony Award in 2009 for her portrayal of an aging actress in a Broadway version of A Little Night Music. In the ensuing decades, Zeta-Jones had sporadic employment, starring in the movies Dad’s Army (2016), Red 2 (2013), and Side Effects (2013). She began playing supporting roles on television, playing Morticia Addams in Wednesday (2022–present) and Olivia de Havilland in Feud: Bette & Joan (2017).

Zeta-Jones is an actor, but she also supports a number of philanthropic organizations and endorses brands. Her battle with bipolar II disorder and depression has been well covered by the media. She has two children with actor Michael Douglas, with whom she is married.

The sweet factory owner David Jones and his seamstress wife Patricia  welcomed Catherine Zeta Jones into the world on September 25, 1969, in Swansea, South Wales. Her mother is of Irish Catholic origin, and her father is Welsh. Zeta Jones named for a ship her great-grandfather sailed on and Catherine Fair were her grandmothers’ names. Her brothers are Lyndon, a younger brother who went into film production after working as a sales representative, and David, her older brother.

She grew up in Swansea’s Mumbles neighborhood. Zeta-Jones’s mother enrolled her in the Hazel Johnson School of Dance when she was four years old due to her hyperactivity. She received her education at Swansea’s elite Dumbarton House School. The family was not wealthy, but things changed when they won £100,000 in a bingo game, allowing them to pay for their daughter’s ballet and dancing classes.

Zeta-Jones began taking part in school plays at an early age, and she was noticed by the local press after winning a Junior Star Trail talent competition with her performance of a Shirley Bassey song. She frequently traveled to London as a member of a dancing ensemble to try out for theater jobs. Zeta-Jones was chosen at the age of nine to portray July, one of the orphan girls in the original West End production of the musical Annie. She also won a national tap dance championship in her early adolescence.

In the Swansea Grand Theatre, she portrayed the title character, Annie, in a musical performance in 1981. She portrayed Tallulah in the title role in a West End production of Bugsy Malone two years later. Zeta-Jones chose to live in London and pursue a full-time acting career when she was fifteen years old, having dropped out of school without earning her O-levels. She was also signed on to play in a touring version of The Pajama Game. Zeta-Jones recalled her adolescent years spent in London by saying, “I would line up for auditions, change into a new costume, or put on a different leotard, and then audition again.”

I always got the job, even if it could take me two tries. I ascertained their desires. She continued on to study musical theater for three years at the independent Arts Educational Schools in the London borough of Chiswick.

Zeta-Jones, then seventeen years old, was chosen to be the lead actress’s backup in a West End production of 42nd Street in 1987. When the first understudy and the headliner were absent for a performance, Zeta-Jones was invited to take on the role of Peggy Sawyer, a chorus girl who eventually becomes famous. Her acting skills won over the producer, who gave her permission to portray the role for the next two years.

In 1989, she made her next stage debut in the London Coliseum with the English National Opera, performing as Mae Jones in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene.