Catherine Zeta-Jones
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES is one of Wales’ most internationally successful screen stars, with a career spanning West End theatre, Hollywood blockbusters, Broadway, award-winning musical performance and major television roles.
Born in Swansea on September 25, 1969, and raised in nearby Mumbles, she showed an early talent for performance. She attended dance classes as a child and appeared in local theatre productions before moving into professional musical theatre while still a teenager.
Her early stage career included productions such as Annie, Bugsy Malone and 42nd Street, where she eventually took over the leading role. Although Hollywood would later make her an international name, Zeta-Jones has often spoken of the stage as her original ambition.
Her major British breakthrough came in 1991 when she was cast as Mariette Larkin in ITV’s The Darling Buds of May, opposite David Jason and Pam Ferris.
The series became one of the most watched programmes on British television and transformed Zeta-Jones into a household name almost overnight.
Hollywood followed.
After a series of film and television roles, she made her international breakthrough as Elena Montero in The Mask of Zorro in 1998, starring opposite Antonio Banderas and fellow Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins.
The success of the film established her as a Hollywood leading lady.
She followed it with roles in Entrapment, opposite Sean Connery, The Haunting and Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed drama Traffic, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
In 2000 she married actor and producer Michael Douglas at New York’s Plaza Hotel. The couple have two children, Dylan and Carys.
Zeta-Jones reached another career high with Chicago in 2002.
Her performance as murderous vaudeville performer Velma Kelly earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild honours.
The role was particularly well suited to a performer whose career had begun in musical theatre.
She subsequently appeared in films including Intolerable Cruelty, The Terminal, Ocean’s Twelve, The Legend of Zorro and No Reservations.
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Back to the stage
Zeta-Jones later returned to musical theatre and made her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Her performance as Desirée Armfeldt earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, adding another major honour to a career which had already brought success in film and television.
In 2010, she was appointed CBE for services to the film industry and charity.
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A new television chapter
During the 2010s, Zeta-Jones continued to take on varied roles, including Side Effects, Red 2, Feud, in which she portrayed Olivia de Havilland, and the television film Cocaine Godmother, playing Colombian drug trafficker Griselda Blanco.
A particularly significant new chapter arrived with Netflix’s Wednesday.
Zeta-Jones plays Morticia Addams, mother of Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams, alongside Luis Guzmán as Gomez.
The role expanded considerably in the second season, with Morticia and Gomez becoming much more closely involved with life at Nevermore Academy. Morticia takes on a role within the school and her increasingly complicated relationship with Wednesday becomes one of the central family dynamics of the series.
Season Two also brought another formidable performer into the Addams family in Joanna Lumley, playing Morticia’s mother, Hester Frump, adding a three-generation family strand involving Wednesday, Morticia and her grandmother.
For Zeta-Jones, the success of Wednesday introduced her to another global generation of viewers more than three decades after The Darling Buds of May first made her famous in Britain.
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Kill Jackie – and a return to Swansea
Another particularly interesting project is Kill Jackie, a thriller series for Prime Video in which Zeta-Jones stars and serves as executive producer.
Adapted from Nick Harkaway’s novel The Price You Pay, the project has particular significance for Wales because filming has included Swansea, bringing one of the city’s most famous performers back to her home territory for a major international production.
That makes Kill Jackie especially noteworthy: it connects Zeta-Jones’s international career directly back to the city where her journey began.
She is also attached to The Gallerist, an independent film featuring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega, extending a particularly active later phase of her screen career.
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Swansea roots
Despite her international career, Zeta-Jones has retained strong connections with Swansea.
Her production company, Milkwood Films, takes its name from Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Like Zeta-Jones, Thomas was closely associated with Swansea.
She was granted the Freedom of the City of Swansea in 2019, recognising both her achievements and her enduring connection with her home city.
Her charitable work has also included support for Swansea organisations as well as national and international causes.
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More than Hollywood
There are some less familiar strands to the Catherine Zeta-Jones story too.
She briefly pursued a recording career, releasing several singles during the late 1980s and 1990s. Her duet with David Essex, True Love Ways, reached the UK singles chart in 1994.
She has also developed business interests away from acting, including her Casa Zeta-Jones lifestyle and homewares brand.
Yet acting and performance remain at the centre of a career that has proved remarkably adaptable.
From a childhood in Swansea and teenage years in musical theatre to The Darling Buds of May, The Mask of Zorro, an Oscar for Chicago, a Tony Award on Broadway and a new generation of viewers discovering her as Morticia Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones has continually reinvented herself.
Few Welsh performers have achieved comparable international recognition.
And more than 30 years after she first became one of Britain’s most familiar television faces, the Swansea-born star remains firmly part of the global entertainment landscape.
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Did Ewe Know?
Catherine Zeta-Jones and husband Michael Douglas share the same birthday — September 25 — although they were born 25 years apart.