Catherine Zeta-JonesCatherine Zeta-Jones
Early Life Born Catherine Jones, in Treboeth, in the parish of Llangyfelach, a working class area of Swansea, Wales, she was the middle child of three children born to David Jones, a Welsh sweet factory owner and Pat Fair, who was of Irish Catholic extraction; Catherine Zeta-Jones was raised as Catholic. After her parents won £100,000 at bingo in the 1980s, they moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, an upper class area of Swansea. She attended Dumbarton House School, Swansea, where she was an average student. She left school early without obtaining O levels qualifications to further her acting ambition. Her name stems from those of her grandmothers; one named Katherine Fair, and the other Zeta Jones, named after a ship which her great-grandfather had sailed on. As a child, she had a tracheotomy which left a scar. One of her first performances to an audience was to friends and family at her Great Aunt Faith O'Brien's house. Catherine Zeta-Jones used the living room table as her stage.
Career Catherine Zeta-Jones' stage career began in childhood. She was a part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe before she was 10, and by 1987 she was starring in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer in the West End. Once the show closed, Catherine Zeta-Jones travelled to France, where she received the lead role in French director Phillippe De Broca's 1001 Nights (a.k.a. Sheherazade), her feature film debut. Her exotic beauty, along with her singing and dancing ability, suggested a promising future, but it was in a straight acting role, as Mariette in the successful television adaptation of H. E. Bates' The Darling Buds of May (1991), that she made her name. She briefly flirted with a musical career, having a part in Jeff Wayne's 1992 Spartacus. A single, "The Appian Way", featured her; it was released but failed to chart. She became famous outside Britain after leading roles in two movies, The Mask of Zorro (1998) with Antonio Banderas and Entrapment (1999) with Sean Connery. It is said that she gained the role in Zorro after Steven Spielberg saw her performance in the Lifetime Television miniseries Titanic, which also stars Tim Curry and Peter Gallagher. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the movie Chicago in 2003. On October 22, 2005, she parodied this fact as guest host on the TV show Saturday Night Live, surrounded by four male dancers, mimicking the Bob Fosse-inspired Chicago-style dancing, suggesting in song that, no matter how bad she might be that night, "They Can't Take My Oscar Away." Apart from her acting career, Catherine Zeta-Jones is also an advertising spokeswoman for the mobile phone company T-Mobile. She is currently the global spokeswoman for cosmetics giant, Elizabeth Arden.
Private Life Catherine Zeta-Jones is married to actor Michael Douglas, with whom she has two children. They were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on November 18, 2000. Their son, Dylan Michael Douglas, was born August 8, 2000. (Her American admirers like to think that he is named after Bob Dylan, a favourite of Douglas, while her British admirers like to think that Dylan Thomas, also born in Swansea, was the inspiration). Their daughter, Carys Zeta Douglas, was born April 20, 2003. Catherine Zeta-Jones has decided that her children will grow up aware of their Welsh heritage and has built a seaside home for her parents in her hometown of Swansea. Her elder brother David A. Jones (also known as Cameron Jones) is creative director for a film company, Initial Entertainment. He was an executive producer of Gangs of New York. Catherine Zeta-Jones's younger brother Lyndon Jones is her personal manager. Catherine Zeta-Jones's parents recently moved from their Mayals property to a £2 million cliff top home two miles away, built for them by Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Filmography Les 1001 nuits (1990) Catherine Zeta-Jones Picture GalleryThis article (or parts thereof) is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. |
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Catherine Zeta-Jones (born September 25, 1969) is an Academy
Award-winning Welsh actress.
