Catherine Zeta-Jones studied musical theatre at the Arts Educational Schools, London and made her stage breakthrough with a leading role in a 1987 production of 42nd Street.
68 Facts About Catherine Zeta-Jones
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Catherine Zeta-Jones received critical acclaim for her performances as a vengeful pregnant woman in Traffic and a murderous singer in the musical Chicago, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones starred in high-profile films for much of the decade, including the black comedy Intolerable Cruelty, the heist film Ocean's Twelve, the comedy The Terminal, and the romantic comedy No Reservations.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones worked intermittently in the subsequent decades, starring in the films Side Effects, Red 2 and Dad's Army.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones is married to actor Michael Douglas, with whom she has two children.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones Zeta Jones was born on 25 September 1969 in Swansea, Wales, to David Jones, the owner of a candy factory, and his wife Patricia, a seamstress.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones's father is Welsh and her mother is of Irish Catholic descent.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was named after her grandmothers, Zeta Jones and Catherine Fair.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones has an older brother, David, and a younger brother, Lyndon, who worked as a sales representative before venturing into film production.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was raised in the Mumbles district of Swansea.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was educated at Dumbarton House School, a private school in Swansea.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones participated in school stage shows from a young age and gained local media attention when her rendition of a Shirley Bassey song won a Junior Star Trail talent competition.
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When she was fifteen, Catherine Zeta-Jones left school without obtaining O-levels and decided to live in London to pursue a full-time acting career; she was engaged to perform in a touring production of The Pajama Game.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones went on to attend the independent Arts Educational Schools in the Chiswick district of London, for a three-year course in musical theatre.
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In 1987, seventeen-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones was picked as the second understudy to the lead actress in a West End production of 42nd Street.
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In 1990, Catherine Zeta-Jones made her film debut in the director Philippe de Broca's film 1001 Nights.
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Bates novel of the same name, Catherine Zeta-Jones played the role of the eldest daughter of a family living in the countryside in 1950s Britain.
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The series was the highest-rated television show in the country at the time, and Catherine Zeta-Jones gained wide public recognition for it.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones next took on the part of an aspiring duchess in Splitting Heirs, a farcical period drama from the director Robert Young about two children who are separated at birth.
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In 1994, Catherine Zeta-Jones played the melancholic Eustacia Vye in the television film The Return of the Native, an adaptation of the 1878 novel of the same name by Thomas Hardy, and the wife of Lloyd Owen's character in the television war drama The Cinder Path.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was then cast as the eponymous protagonist of the 1995 television biopic Catherine the Great.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones next appeared as the pragmatic girlfriend of Sean Pertwee's character in Blue Juice, publicised as Britain's first surf film, which the critic Leonard Maltin dismissed as a "superficial and predictable" production.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones earned the part of Sala, the henchwoman to the villainous Drax in the superhero film The Phantom, starring Billy Zane in the titular role.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones found similarities between her "volatile" Celtic personality and her Latin character's temperament, and in preparation she learnt dancing, riding and sword-fighting, and took diction lessons in Spanish.
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Later that year, Catherine Zeta-Jones appeared alongside Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting, a remake of the 1963 film of the same name about a team of paranormal experts who look into strange occurrences in an ill-fated mansion.
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Edward Guthman of the San Francisco Chronicle considered Catherine Zeta-Jones to be a standout among the cast and labelled her "sensational" in a scene in which Helena confronts a Tijuana dealer, adding that "through sheer conviction, she electrifies a moment that could have been absurd".
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The ensemble of Traffic won the SAG Award for Outstanding Cast and Catherine Zeta-Jones was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones starred as a shrewd film star, opposite Julia Roberts who featured as her character's under-confident sibling.
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The critic Roger Ebert compared the film unfavourably to the musical Singin' in the Rain, but thought that Catherine Zeta-Jones was aptly "chilly and manipulative" in her part.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was drawn to the project to give her young children an opportunity to "hear [her] and get a sense of [her] on film", but the film proved to be a box office bomb.
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Also in 2003, Catherine Zeta-Jones starred alongside George Clooney in the Coen brothers black comedy Intolerable Cruelty.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones next worked with Soderbergh to film Ocean's Twelve, a sequel to his heist film Ocean's Eleven, which reunited her with stars Clooney, Pitt, and Roberts.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones did not have any film releases in 2006.
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In 2007, Catherine Zeta-Jones starred alongside Aaron Eckhart and Abigail Breslin in the romantic comedy No Reservations, a remake of the German film Mostly Martha.
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In preparation for her part, Catherine Zeta-Jones worked in the kitchen and waited on tables at New York's Fiamma Osteria restaurant.
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Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote that Catherine Zeta-Jones "shines as a character that finely balances off-putting reserve with sympathetic appeal", and Roger Ebert, despite disliking the film, did find her to be "convincing" in her role.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones instead chose to focus on her family and health, having been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, and her infrequent acting appearances were in smaller-scale and less successful productions.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones took on the role of a forty-year-old mother attracted to a younger man in the romantic comedy The Rebound.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones returned to the stage in 2009 with a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music, which marked her Broadway debut.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones did not listen to past recordings of the songs in the musical so she could bring her own interpretation to them.
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Reviews of the film were negative, and Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times found Catherine Zeta-Jones to be "far too shrill to amuse".
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was attracted to the idea of playing a "nightmare of a woman" and based the role on the politician Michele Bachmann; the film received mixed reviews and failed commercially.
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In 2013, Catherine Zeta-Jones took on a leading role in the crime thriller Broken City, co-starring Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe.
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The critic Todd McCarthy thought that Catherine Zeta-Jones "looks like class itself and nicely underplays", and Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail observed that the actress "does a fair, if incongruous, impersonation of a forties vamp".
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Peter Travers, writing for Rolling Stone, called the film a "hell of a thriller, twisty, terrific and packed with surprises" and found Catherine Zeta-Jones to be "dynamite" in it.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was drawn to the project, which follows the comic adventures of retired spies, for "the action, the humour, [and] the tongue-in-cheek quality of it".
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Catherine Zeta-Jones found such a part opposite Bill Nighy and Toby Jones in the British war comedy film Dad's Army, based on the television sitcom of the same name.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as a glamorous journalist reporting on a British Home Guard platoon based in Walmington-on-Sea.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones returned to television in 2017, portraying actress Olivia de Havilland in the first season of Ryan Murphy's anthology drama series Feud, subtitled Bette and Joan, about the rivalry between the actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
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Dominic Patten of Deadline Hollywood found Catherine Zeta-Jones to be "wonderfully cast" and Sonia Saraiya of Variety credited her for providing "the best turn in the show".
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In 2018, Catherine Zeta-Jones starred as the drug lord Griselda Blanco in the Lifetime television film Cocaine Godmother.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones next played the lead role of Vicki Ellis, an unrelenting pageant coach, in the Facebook Watch comedy-drama series Queen America.
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In 2021, Catherine Zeta-Jones appeared in a recurring role in the second season of the Fox drama series Prodigal Son.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones played Dr Vivian Capshaw, a doctor, opposite Michael Sheen.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones next took on a guest role as Morticia Addams in two episodes of the Netflix fantasy series Wednesday.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones subsequently played the main antagonist of the Disney+ adventure series National Treasure: Edge of History.
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Joshua Alston of Variety found Catherine Zeta-Jones to be the "best thing" about the show, adding that "her snarling villainy veers so close to camp that it sounds at times like she's workshopping a comedic impression of her own voice".
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Catherine Zeta-Jones is a patron of Swansea's Longfields Day Centre for the disabled, and has made sizeable donations to the centre.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones briefly dabbled with a singing career in the early 1990s.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones later sang "True Love Ways", a duet with David Essex in 1994.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones has featured as an advertising spokeswoman for several brands and products.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was named the global ambassador for the cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden, Inc in 2002.
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In 2017, Catherine Zeta-Jones launched her own line of home decoration products named Casa Catherine Zeta-Jones.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones continued to feature on the list from 2000 to 2004.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the Monarchy of the United Kingdom in 2010 for her film and charity work.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones met American actor Michael Douglas, with whom she shares her birthday and who is 25 years her senior, at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in August 1998, after being introduced by Danny DeVito.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones sought treatment by checking herself into hospital in 2011, and again in 2013.
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Catherine Zeta-Jones has received two Golden Globe Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Traffic and Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for Chicago.