A Film Review by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

I could hear the buzz all the way to exile!

Well I don't know anything about writing a movie review, being a spiritual leader and all, but Richard says I might be able to do

for Buddhism what Ebert did for v-neck sweaters. Say no more, buddinski!

Who cares that I haven't seen a movie since my monks and me took in Whitesnake-a-licious Tawny Kitaen in Bachelor Party. Talk about divine rapture!

So into the theater we reverentially shuffled. I'll tell you, whoever said "peace is in every step" never stepped into a movie theater. Gum is in every step! In Tibet, we'd never litter the path with overpriced concession debris any more than we'd share our own drinking urine with strangers.

What can I say about Chicago? Except for clunky rhyme-words like "Methuselah" and "Bamboozelah," and except for the ratio between singing and deep dish pizza, it was fine. And by "fine" I mean highly over-rated.

Normally, my religion is kindness. But I'll make an exception in this case. Sleep is the best meditation, and by the umpteenth production number, boy did my eyes want to meditate.

I know the Golden Globes people gave Chicago a slew of nominations, but who are you gonna believe? A pack of international junket whores and star succubae or someone who sips tea with enlightenment on a daily basis? Huh?

And what about the violence? I mean the way Richard butchered the songs! He sings like he's got a gerbil up his ass - not that he does or ever has, I might add.

Chicago is about a celebrated murder case in the Roaring '20s: The murderers cling to the front page like their lives depend on it, the legal chicanery feeds on them, and the publicity machine swarms over them. Sound familiar? It's nice to know that the more perspective we gain on the O.J. Simpson murder

case, the more commercially viable it becomes as a musical comedy. Sing along with me: "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"

Does Chicago mean every stage song-and-dance-fest will be making its Great White Way to a theater near you? For Buddha's sake, I hope not.

Richard tap-dances in this movie. I warned him that in Tibet the only guys tap-dancing are the eunuchs. "Speaking of guys who carry their testicles in a jar," Richard said, "I'd like you to meet Catherine Zeta-Jones' husband Michael Douglas." Love is a necessity for our survival, and when you love Catherine Zeta-Jones you're surviving in style. Even if it means you play ping-pong with your own balls.

Queen Latifah plays a prominent role in this movie. Now I've met virtually all the world's royal families, but I must say I don't recall meeting a Queen named Latifah - certainly not one whose gold crown is visible only when she smiles.

And speaking as someone who hasn't laid eyes on a real woman since Madeleine Albright, that Renee Zelwegger is hotsie-tottsie! As my good friend and spiritual disciple Charlie Sheen says, "true happiness comes from a sense of peace - and a piece of ass."

So remember: The purpose of our lives is to be happy. And if befriending Richard Gere is the price we pay for a little happiness, then so be it.

Sincerely,

Dalai

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CHICAGO (2002) ***1/2 Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah, Christine Baranski, Taye Diggs, Dominic West, Lucy Liu. Dazzling adaptation of the Broadway smash hit singing and dancing musical version of `Roxie Hart' about the Roaring 20's notorious media sensation murder incorporating Hart's viewpoint seen in fantasized production numbers. Zeta-Jones and Zellweger are a dream team as the ‘caged heat' providing the extravagant hoofing and exuberant vocals while Gere does the best he can as the slick-haired lawyer tap-dancing his way to a perfect winning record at all costs. Director Rob Marshall employs a no-holds barred approach with its high energy, brilliant production design by John Myhre, crisp editing by Martin Walsh and glossy cinematography by Dion Beebe glimmers brightly on the silver screen. Bill Condon's screenplay adaptation of Fred Ebb & Bob Fosse's classic retains its razor sharp precision and cuttingly comic dialogue. Great fun; murder has never looked so good!

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Catherine Zeta-Jones...Not Bad

In Articles

US: Did Michael watch Dylan being born?

Douglas: Oh, yes! I cut the cord. They had a nice setup there – a birthing room where, between labor and the actual delivery, you don’t move, you don’t leave. It had a nice view, you can listen to your favorite music, and you’re right there. Dylan came on out, and we immediately put him on Catherine’s chest while he was still connected and everything.

Zeta-Jones: I was counting the fingers and toes and looking at his mouth, which looks just like mine, and then went, "Wait a minute. Look at his dimple!" We just completely lost it. It was hilarious! The second thing I noticed was that he had this birthmark on his hand. I have one on my leg, a strawberry birthmark.

US: Had you been trying together for a baby for some time?

Zeta-Jones: It didn’t take us long! We only had to think about it, and it was like, "Oh! Look!"

US: Did you take the little home pregnancy test?

Zeta-Jones: Yes. I got six of them. I don’t trust those things!

US: Catherine, did you have any problems with the baby kicking during the pregnancy?

Zeta-Jones: He was pretty mobile in there! There’s an old wives’ tale in Wales that before you give birth, the baby calms down and goes quiet, but through-out my pregnancy, Dylan was moving around and you could see the fists and feet coming out. There were so many months when I’d shout, "Look, look, look, look!" And Michael would run over to see my stomach and I’d say, "Oh, it’s gone, it’s finished."

US: Let’s talk about when you met at the Deauville Film Festival. What was that like?

Douglas: When I came in to Deauville to do my promotion I looked at the schedule and saw The Mask of Zorro was the next night. So I asked my publicist to find out if Catherine Zeta-Jones was coming to the festival, if she was coming alone and if I could have dinner with her.

US: This was all very forward of you, Michael…

Douglas: Yes, it was. But my publicist got back and he said, "Yes, she is coming, she’s coming for the night, and dinner is a possibility." I knew Melanie Griffith, who was there with Antonio Banderas. So the four of us had dinner together, and then Catherine had to go and do some promotional stuff, but we were staying at the same hotel. So I said, "I’ll be back at the hotel bar." You know – hope, hope, hope! And, sure enough, she came back and we had a nightcap.

US: Did you think that was the end?

Douglas: Well, the next day I realized that I’d got carried away (saying "I want to father your children"), and my publicist said, "You’ve met her before, obviously?" I said I hadn’t. I guess I really lucked out.

US: What happened next?

Douglas: She was going the very next day to some bizarre island off the coast of Scotland for the shooting of Entrapment, and I sent her about three dozen red roses with a little note: "Hopefully I wasn’t too out of line – hopefully we’ll see each other again." I think she was impressed that I managed to get roses to her in this isolated spot.

Zeta-Jones: I couldn’t believe it. I was very impressed. I’d been filing with Sean Connery in the freezing cold, horizontal rain, and when I got back to the hotel, the receptionist said, "You have a very big surprise upstairs!" When I got upstairs, there’s this huge bouquet of flowers with "Love, Michael Douglas." Everyone in the hotel was like, "Did you see your surprise from Mr. Douglas?" and I was thinking, I’m really going to keep this quiet on the Isle of Mull!

US: After Deauville and Michael’s comment about wanting to father your children, did you actually want to see him again?

Zeta-Jones: Yes, I wanted to see him again, but I knew I was shooting a movie, then I was going to Kuala Lumpur, and he was in New York. We were just thinking, Well, let’s wait until we have time to be together.

Douglas: We had a Christmas Eve dinner, then we were off working again. We caught up a couple of time, then I went to Spain in June. I asked Catherine if she wanted to come over, and she agreed. I thought, Wow!

Zeta-Jones: I said that I was in London and I could just pop over.

Douglas: She came over for five days and never left. We’d been courting for nine months at that point. We took a look at each other for four or five days and made a few phone calls to people we were dating or going out with. We’d decided that if we were going to carry on with this, we were going to do it properly.

US: Michael, at the same time you were courting Catherine, you had to put on 25 pounds to play a middle-aged college professor in Wonder Boys. How did you cope with that?

Douglas: I was so embarrassed. It was not the most appropriate time. I felt like a sea turtle! But Catherine’s very comfortable with different bodies. I think that come from her background in theatre and dance. She certainly made me feel good about myself during a very vulnerable courting stage.

Zeta-Jones: I must have been so in love, because I can’t remember him being that big. But, as Michael says, I’m comfortable with all that. I was brought up with brothers, and when we went to the beach, my mum would be like, "Off with the clothes, on with the swimsuit!" So, I had no choice!

US: How long were you in the hospital?

Zeta-Jones: Only a day. It was so funny when I came back here. I put Dylan in his crib, walked into the living room and then ran back to see if he was still breathing! It’s so amazing how naturally – intstictually – you just do this. I couldn’t believe how much your body changes during the whole pregnancy – for good and bad. It’s an amazing thing that happens, and these natural instincts just come out.

My mother has her jaw down by her chest constantly. I never played with a doll when I was a kid; I never had a buggy. Every year for Christmas I’d get six dolls, and they’re all in my mother’s attic, perfectly preserved. I never played with them – I was not into babies, you know? And now my mother’s watching me breast-feed and she’s like, "I don’t believe this." My father said, "I’m looking at it, I’m watching her, and I still can’t believe it!"

Douglas: I think they all thought that because you were into dancing so young and because of your career and all of that, you’d never have time to have a family. But I didn’t know that, because in our time together, Catherine seemed to be so innately into it.

Zeta-Jones: He looked at my hips and said: "Those are child-bearing hips, girl!"

Douglas: The obstetrician backed that up!

US: So you’d be proud, Catherine, if Dylan was down-to-earth and hardworking?

Zeta-Jones: I just want him to be a good, solid boy, knowing right from wrong, saying "please" and "thank you" – the things that I was brought up with. Manners, basic things like being a gentleman.

I’m already dreaming of when he’s getting married. I’m having these vivid dreams of me and Michael standing in the church, and he’s squeezing my hand.

Douglas: I’m standing? Thank God I’m standing!

- Partial transcript of US Weekly Interview with Catherine and Michael 9.25.00

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MAXIM: What is it about men in masks?

CZJ: When the face is hidden and the eyes become the focus, it’s all more mysterious. I actually find it very sexy when Arab women wear those veils [mimes pulling a veil across the bottom of her face], even if I don’t agree with the lifestyle. But that’s as far as it goes, OK? [Laughs] No bondage fantasies, no whips, no nothing!

M: What’s it like to chat in extraordinarily tight clothing, like those corsets you wore in Zorro?

CZJ: Bloody hard. Can’t eat many tamales, either. And in Mexico, you don’t have much bloody choice – it’s quesadillas or tamales.

M: What happens when you take the corset off at the end of the day?

CZJ: Well, all the blood has stopped dead for about 12 hours, so you itch madly. And you realize how bad your posture normally is. A corset forces your spine to be completely straight. And I happen to have a flexible spine.

M: What the hell does that mean?

CZJ: I can double back and all that.

M: I’m speechless.

CZJ: You’re thinking, What can she do? Well, I kind of slouch, like this…[Bracing her arms across the back of the booth, she bends backward dramatically like a La-Z-Boy chair, thrusting her breasts heavenward]

M: [On autopilot]: Do you…work out?

CZJ: Yeah, but I have to work twice as hard here! When I’m doing push-ups at the L.A. gyms, there are all these women whose fake boobs are already touching the floor. I have so much further to go.

M: You still smoke, right?

CZJ: I used to smoke quite a bit, but here they make you feel like a second-class citizen. I feel like a leper.

M: What pisses you off about L.A.?

CZJ: The lies. People here talk about you as if they know you. They’ve seen you once in the bar, and suddenly you’re their best friend. I’ve actually had strangers say to me, "Do you know Catherine Zeta-Jones?" Naturally I say, "Yeah." And they go, "Oh, Z knows me too." What else irks me? If you’re nice, people think you’re an idiot. I’ve even had to say, "Don’t confuse my niceness for stupidity. This is not my first barbecue."

M: Are you ever pigeonholed as just a pretty face?

CZJ: No. There are too many beautiful girls in the world and too few movies, so you’ve got to have something else going for you. In Zorro my character is not the damsel in distress. She’s the blood of Zorro, so she rides like a man. She fights, she’s athletic, she’s smart. And the film’s not nostalgic in any way. We weren’t trying to re-create a squashbuckling Errol Flynn movie.

M: Did you just say "squashbuckling"?

CZJ: Swashbuckling. [Laughs] Sorry, I was just trying to get this bloody orange pulp from my teeth.

M: Did you slice off anyone’s swash?

CZJ: Thank God, there were no accidents. Those swords were real – not those rubber jobs.

M: What’s more important: the size of a man’s sword or how he uses it?

CZJ: How he uses it.

M: OK, but what if he has a big sword and he really knows how to use it?

CZJ: Bloody good for him…and for me, too. [Laughs]

- Partial transcript of Maxim interview July-Aug 1998

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Marie Claire: Which adjectives would you use to describe yourself?

CZJ: Approachable. That’s it.

MC: How would you prefer to be described: successful, glamorous, smart, or sweet?

CZJ: Smart. To be smart – not just intellectually, but street-smart, socially smart, and smart healthwise – is much more attractive than just being beautiful. Once a couple gets over sexual attraction, they’ve got to have something to say.

MC: Do you consider yourself sexy?

CZJ: I like to feel sexy. I know my husband thinks I’m sexy; I think he is, too. But I don’t go out half-naked with SEX written across my back. I don’t like to do that. I like to be sensually sexy.

MC: If there were one thing you could change about your appearance, what would it be?

CZJ: I had a virus as a baby and needed a tracheotomy. I have a scar and little broken capillaries, and they drive me nuts sometimes. But that’s about it.

MC: What would Michael say if you cut your hair short?

CZJ: Nothing.

MC: What do you feel sexiest in?

CZJ: Nothing.

MC: What does Michael most like you to wear?

CZJ: Nothing.

MC: Which item in your closet do you wear most?

CZJ: My silk robe.

MC: What is your proudest moment?

CZJ: When I saw my son, on my chest, still attached to me. I have it on video.

MC: What makes a man irresistible?

CZJ: Humor and that wonderful word called "charisma." You cannot translate it. I can’t nail it on the head, other than to just say I’m completely over the top about my husband.

MC: Do you feel Hollywood’s pressure to always look beautiful, glamorous, and fit?

CZJ: No. But I do hate that the Academy Awards has become a bit of a fashion show; I’d hate it to be too much about whether you’ve made a fashion faux pas.

MC: What’s the oddest question an interviewer has ever asked you?

CZJ: While promoting Traffic, I’d just had a baby and gotten married. All the press could ask was, "Is he teething?" But the rudest question was, "Was your pregnancy a mistake?" I just said, "It’s none of your business, and how dare you?"

MC: Rank these four things in order of importance: money, career, family, friends.

CZJ: Family. Friends…what were the other ones?

MC: Money and career.

CZJ: Career, and then money.

- Partial transcript of Marie Claire Q&A from August 2001

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In September 1999, a publicist friend of mine heard that Michael Douglas was looking for an assistant. I’d been working as a personal assistant to Marlo Thomas for about nine months. I found that job through an employment agency. Before Marlo, I had no experience in entertainment.

Personal assistants can make a good living; salaries start at $60,000 and can go as high as six figures. There are also a lot of perks if you have a great boss.

My first interview with Michael lasted only 15 minutes. Two days later, he left a message on my answering machine – "Hi, this is Michael Douglas…" – asking for a second interview. I saved that message for days. At the second interview, I met Catherine. She walked into the room in a bathrobe, wearing no make-up, and she was unbelievably gorgeous. As it turned out, I got the job.

After two years, it’s still hard to describe an average day. At 10 a.m., five days a week, I arrive at my office, which is in Michael and Catherine’s Central Park apartment in New York City. If they’re in town, they’re both usually already up, having breakfast. I’ll go into the kitchen, chat with them for a minute, then head into my office, where I have my own breakfast.

From around 10 until lunchtime, I check e-mail, receive faxes, and take phone calls, mainly about Michael’s production company. Of course, I treat anyone who calls graciously, whether it’s Jack Nicholson or the floor guy. My other duties include separating the mail into different folders and arranging Michael and Catherine’s calendar of events. I actually prefer when they are home, because the house is so alive. From my office, I heard them in the kitchen singing show tunes. Or Michael will dictate a letter to me while bouncing the baby.

I usually eat my lunch at the apartment. Afterward, whenever Michael and Catherine are in New York, I organize their social plans. It’s my job to know the latest hot spots and take care of the reservations. I also have to scout out restaurants they might enjoy. Having a huge network of owners and managers all over town helps.

I also have a Rolodex with 3100 names in it, which allows me to organize their lives. If we need something from the hardware store, I call the store at which we have an account, and the item is delivered.

I also have additional, miscellaneous responsibilities. For example, I had to prescreen applicants for a full-time nanny position, as well as a housekeeping position. Both jobs are now filled.

At around 7, I finish my day and go home to my husband. Occasionally, Michael and Catherine invite me to have a drink with them at the end of the day.

The biggest exception to my 10-to-7 schedule was the six-month period I spent helping plan their wedding at the Plaza Hotel. During that intense time, I occasionally worked 12-hour days. I was coordinating details, such as flowers, invitations, and the confidentiality agreements that had to be signed by those involved. But I didn’t help out with Catherine’s dress.

My hours also differ when I travel with them. Next week, I’m helping them settle into their house in Majorca, Spain, for the summer. Among other things, I will get their computer running. Catherine loves in Internet and e-mail; she even had a picture of their son, Dylan, made into a computer mouse-pad. We are a little bit Dylan-obsessed around here.

I’ve only traveled with Michael and Catherine once before. When they were filming Traffic, Catherine was six-months pregnant. I flew to San Diego to help her for six-and-a-half weeks. We went shopping and ate meals together, so we got a chance to get to know each other. But I would never go to her hotel room and say, "Hey, Catherine, wanna get dinner?" I would only go if invited. To do this job, you have to constantly remind yourself of the boundaries. I am not here to be their best friend. This is their reality, and I am just along for the ride. It can end at any time.

Besides me, Michael also has a personal assistant in Los Angeles to oversee his business on the West Coast. And his publicist travels with him as well.

My family still gets a kick out of my job, but I am at a point where I’m not like, "Oh my God, I’m in Michael Douglas’s house!" There isn’t a celebrity I’d lost it over if I ever met them – maybe Jennifer Aniston. But even if she asked me to be her assistant, I’d say no. I’ve got a great thing here.

– Julianna Berkowitz (Full transcript from Marie Claire, August 2001)

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Entertainment Weekly: Are you smoking more expensive cigarettes?

CZJ: No, I don’t smoke anymore. There’s no smoking on the set [of Entrapment]. I’m speaking too much [in the film]. I’m doing too much physical activity…I may as well just wear a habit – a nun’s outfit or something – on the way to work.

EW: You’re starring with some famous married men. Is jealousy ever a factor on the set?

CZJ: Never, ever, ever. The only time I’ve ever experienced jealousy was with somebody on the set who was not an actor who I couldn’t possibly do anything right for. A set is hundreds of people thrown together working up to 16 hours a day. Now, who’s to say that those personalities should jell?

EW: What would be your dream role?

CZJ: [Cabaret’s] Sally Bowles. I would also love to do Tennessee Williams. When I was growing up, he was the only person that I associated with America.

EW: How is it being recognized in L.A.?

CZJ: I’ve never been recognized in Los Angeles. [Whispers] The catch is I haven’t been there since May.

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Who is that? The question reverberated throughout Hollywood the minute the first photo spreads of her started to appear in magazine just before the release of The Mask of Zorro. She had the look of a magnificent Latina – or was it Asian or Indian blood that made her such an exotic knockout? She was a glorious alternative to Hollywood’s usual parade of faintly androgynous, anorexic young actresses. Raven-haired, amber-eyed, impossibly lush, she exuded a saucy, self-assured carnality rarely seen since the days of Sophia Loren. Who was she?

Even as The Mask of Zorro hit cinemas and the name, Catherine Zeta-Jones, became associated with the spectacular beauty who traded en gardes and double entendres with Antonio Banderas, the question lingered. At the very least, she was the most extraordinary new face on celluloid. To many, she held the promise of something even more prized – a new movie star. She’d already been handpicked by Sean Connery to co-star with him in Entrapment, the big-budget romantic thriller he was producing. Where on earth had this creature been hiding?

The answer is, as it turns out, rather complicated.

What might have been a career that was half Rita Hayworth, half Ann Miller, turned into something else altogether when Catherine was cast, at 19, as the buxom, dazzling daughter of a decadent 50s family in the sexy, nostalgic British TV series, The Darling Buds of May. Overnight, 23 million British TV viewers seized on the young beauty’s ripe looks and minx-like allure and Catherine Zeta-Jones became a national obsession. During the show’s three-year reign, her entire life became fodder for gossip. British tabloids – pit bulls that make their Australian counterparts looks like lap dogs – were rabid in their pursuit of her. They followed her day and night, sifted through her rubbish bin and set up surveillance equipment outside her house. Celebrity ate the overnight sensation alive.

When I meet Zeta-Jones in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, where she owns a home not far from those of Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and her village mate and old friend, Anthony Hopkins, I’m curious about the months spent filming Entrapment in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Scotland with director Jon Amiel and Sean Connery. I also want to know about the film she’s embarking on, Jan de Bont’s big-budget The Haunting of Hill House. But I’m most curious about what, exactly, went on in London that led her to uproot herself and move to Los Angeles.

In case you’re wondering, up close Zeta-Jones is a full-on stunner: all statuesque 173cm of her are groomed and dressed as if she studio system were still in full force and she’d been taught that being a movie star means looking like one. While she pointedly ignore the number of single men who’ve positioned themselves at adjacent tables to pretend not to be watching her, I mention how refreshingly she differs from most actresses today, who seem to want the salaries of stars without the hassle of looking the part.

"Oh, please, life’s too short – they should just get over it," she laughs, radiating a forthrightness that gives her charisma extra dash. "Listen, I used to do that no make-up, straight-hair, really-dark-coat, frumpy thing so many actresses do, because I was told to. When I asked why I was supposed to look like I’d slept under a bridge all night, I was told, ‘You shouldn’t go in looking glamorous, because casting people and directors want to see you looking natural.’ But I wasn’t getting hired. So, finally, I said, ‘Can’t I just wear my Gucci clogs?’ Only when I started going to auditions as myself did I get work." She chases this mouthful with a roaring, full-bodied laugh.

Realizing Zeta-Jones is prepared to give a lively account of the early life that made her Hollywood ascent more than resurrection of, rather than the birth of, a star, I decide to get right to the point. "So how did your career in the UK go haywire after you became famous in The Darling Buds of May?"

She shudders at the mention of that part of her personal history. "My life changed the night the first show aired," she says in a musky, throbbing lilt that recalls the voice of Ingrid Bergman. "I was the new kid on the block. Someone on whom they didn’t have anything, whom they hadn’t seen in anything before – as far as TV viewers were concerned, anyway. To them, the stage work I’d done – things like the English National Opera’s revival of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene and Anthony Hopkins revival of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood – were nothing. I’m not from a show-business family. My friends were regular people. I literally didn’t know what to do.

"Every single day there was something new about me in the newspapers and magazines. I was 20, going out and having fun for the first time, and that was all documented by the British press. I’d never been a party girl. Suddenly, anyone I so much as shared a coffee with became, in the papers, the ‘new love of my life’. I went from ‘never going out and nothing going on’ to people thinking I was having everyone out behind the shed.

"When I didn’t want to participate in the stuff journalists wanted, like talking about when I lost my virginity, it for very nasty. And no one taught me how to protect myself or deal with all that attention. I remember arriving at an airport one time, seeing my dace on the cover of every tabloid, and thinking, ‘What have I done – murdered someone?’ Some of what they said at times was very nice and complimentary. But I think of myself back then as trapped."

"Is it true that you actually smashed up your car in London trying to elude the press?" I ask.

Zeta-Jones nods. "I was driving my car and I could see in the rear-view mirror that they were following me. So I turned left into this oily little back street and I skidded and hit a lamppost. I was basically unharmed and they just drove away."

"And what was all this doing for you career wise?"

"I did a couple of scenes in a couple of small films, and they were written about as though it were my fault they flopped," she declares. "The perception of me started to affect the small nucleus of people who made creative decisions about films. I was totally cut off from a whole new generation of filmmakers and stage directors coming out of the UK. To them, I suppose I was ‘TV’ or just fluffy. I didn’t even get close to [Trainspotting director] Danny Boyle, [Jude director] Michael Winterbottom or [Cabaret revival director] Sam Mendes. And all the while, I was going nuts seeing some projects other people were doing and thinking, ‘What’s that woman doing there instead of me?’"

"So, while Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Winslet, Emily Watson and Cate Blanchett got the sort of roles you longer for, you were doing a little number called Blue Juice?"

"I could see myself having a lot of money but doing crap, being just sexy and pretty for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want that," Zeta-Jones says defiantly. "It was a very personal kick in the stomach. My wonderful agent, who’s been with me since I was a kid, kept saying, ‘Hang on, Catherine, hang on.’ I was this close to giving them all the big finger and going, ‘Sit on that, okay?’ But I’m not like that as a person."

"And then?"

"Around this time, there came a three-page article about ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones, has-been at 24.’ I was called a ‘loser’, that terrible word that should be stricken from the language. I started to lose my confidence. Finally, I decided – maybe I was out of my mind – that I wanted to come to America, even though I knew only one person here. It was hard, especially since I’d never spent one Christmas away from my family. Immediately, they wrote in the UK that I went to Hollywood to pick up my failing career.

All of which brings us back to Pacific Palisades, where, circa 1995, she settled into an apartment. "It was opposite the Self-Realization Fellowship and the number of the apartment building was 666," She said wryly. "I thought: good omen. I was really lonely. One time I stayed between leases in a friend’s big house in Malibu. I was so scared I slept in the closet."

When I broach the subject of past romances, it becomes evident how scorched she’s been by the notoriety that has attended her personal life. Zeta-Jones has no intention of discussing the apparently quite serious relationships she reportedly had with British TV star John Leslie, movie actor Angus MacFayden and ex-movie mogul Jon Peters, from whom she broke off after he proposed rather than risk becoming a Hollywood trophy wife. Nor will she discuss her romance with singer Mick Hucknall.

Zeta-Jones is equally reticent about the whys and wherefores of reportedly not landing certain roles when she first came to Hollywood, including two that the then-hot British import, Julia Ormond, won: First Knight and Sabrina. "I knocked on door after door to be greeted by, ‘So, what have you done?’ she recalls, savoring the irony of having gone from doors being closed thanks to intense notoriety to doors being slammed thanks to complete obscurity. "It was like another big slap in the face," she recalls.

But she hardly went hungry. In 1996, she appeared in a showy, though futile, role in The Phantom. Then, after she’d booked a passage as a heroic beauty on TV’s cut-rate Titanic, her break came when Steven Spielberg spotted her in that disaster and deemed her, wittily, "worth rescuing from that ship". He recommended her to director Martin Campbell for The Mask of Zorro. Despite Spielberg’s endorsement, Campbell had serious doubts. He later admitted in print his "surprise" at how good Zeta-Jones turned out to be.

"My screen test with Antonio Banderas was really bizarre because there were two other girls in the screen test at the same time," says Zeta-Jones. "We’d each improvise with Antonio. Oh, but hell, as long as I was one of the three, I didn’t care."

"When the tabloids printed unfounded rumors that Melanie Griffith ‘fought tooth and claw’ to make sure Antonio Banderas and you, his ‘sultry co-star’ weren’t getting along too well, did you say, ‘Oh, no, not this bullcrap again?"

"I went, ‘Oh shit. Give Melanie a break’," Zeta-Jones replies. "She had just given birth and was down in Mexico in location to be with her husband, exactly as I would be doing. She was lovely and professional, asking if I’d mind if she watched us shoot a sword fight. When I told people how nice she was, they’d still say, ‘Well, she had to be nice to you.’ I was like, ‘Oh, fuck off!’"

Zeta-Jones emerged from Zorro smelling like a rose – even in the UK, where she wowed them at the royal premiere and got reviews that matched the excitement she generated stateside. "It’s astounding the international appeal generated by being in one successful American movie," she marvels. "I don’t have to tell you there’s a definite hierarchy, a filtration process when it comes to script material. There’s not a lot of power to being an actor apart from bring able to read material that’s going to the big boys and girls. And some of those interesting British directors, the ones who wouldn’t even see me before? They’ve sent projects, too."

How could they not? Here’s a girl who’s bigger than life and not abashed at showing it – perhaps because she’s already won, lost, and recaptured major fame. Handling her second dose of stardom – and this time a much bigger helping – she’s a poised, seasoned and gracious pro. Even her body language reveals a joy at doing things smarter the second time around. "I love being bold, alive, in the moment," she says. "Those are qualities of the strong, brave stars I grew up loving."

"Is that why, on the rare occasions you’ve photographed out on the town, you look every inch the old-style movie goddess?"

Zeta-Jones offers a knowing sidelong glance. "I love glamour and glitz, going to premieres dressed up and smiling and waving. What I don’t love is being chased in my car by two men on a motorbike – there’s a big difference. But in America, I’m free to go anywhere I want. I feel blessed."

How long all this lasts will depend, to some degree, on Zeta-Jones’s upcoming movie, Entrapment, the big-budget thriller in which she and Connery play adversarial and, finally, amorous thieves. "They flew me on one of these whistle-stop things to Rome to meet with Sean and see how he and I felt together," she recalls. "I got to the hotel, had my hair done and met him in a hotel by the Spanish steps. He was very honest about how they were seeing a lot of people and the studio wanted a name. Later I did a screen test to see that the age difference wasn’t too much." Apparently, for Connery the age difference wasn’t a problem. How about for her? "That was right in front of my mind all the way to Rome," she admits. "I know I wanted to work with him but, for the movie to be successful, we had to look right. There had to be that spark. Well, when I met him, I went – " she breaks off, and laughs, "I went, ‘Oh yes, I think we’re going to be just fine."

"The relationship between Sean and me really works," she continues. "His character is a complete bastard and my character in perfectly matched with his. I’m an international art thief who’s very alone, very tough. Men aren’t even in my equation. I want him as a partner because he’s an old-fashioned thief who knows everything."

Zeta-Jones is proud of being able to keep pace with Connery. "I’d wake up in the morning scared, looking at myself in the mirror brushing my teeth, thinking, ‘I’ve got to cry on screen for the next two days.’ Then I’d get to the set, look at Sean and feel honored to be sharing an experience with someone like him. And even after shitting myself with fear on the set, I’d go back to my room at night, slip into the rub and go, ‘Yeah, I actually did it.’ Working with Sean was the best time I’ve ever had on a movie."

"Okay, you guys are two of the planet’s sexiest people, but the movie camera is relentless at finding fault, and Connery, icon and sex god though he may be, was 67 to your 28."

"But think of the classic couplings in older movies," she asserts. "Bogie and Bacall, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. What makes them interesting isn’t the fact that the woman’s younger, but that she’s right up there with the man. That’s what I wanted to play here."

"So, how was the kiss?" I ask.

"Sean is a good kisser," she says, grinning, "Antonio Banderas was a very good kisser, too," she adds. What makes for a good kisser? "Someone who does it quickly so that we can get the shot perfectly on the first take," she fires back. Then she adds, "Someone who doesn’t make my nose look smashed – which can be difficult because a bratty boy slammed a door on it and broke it when I was 12. A good kisser also holds my chin so that my profile is really fabulous, dahh-ling. Someone who holds the cleft of my back so it arches just right and gives me a great silhouette – that’s what I call a good kisser."

Given her comments about Connery, can one assume that Zeta-Jones might like older men? Lots. "Older men come on to me all the time, and I’m really happy about that. I really like them. I’m probably the only person on the beach who sees a hard-bodied guy and goes, ‘Oh, put it away, will you?’ Beautiful boys are far too interested in making themselves look beautiful. They don’t want any competition. At the beach, I’m far more likely to be attracted to a guy no one else notices sitting far off under an umbrella reading a book."

How would Zeta-Jones rate her own sexuality? "I can be sexy," she says playfully. "I have been known to be." Here she sobers up and says matter-of-factly, "I make the best of myself. I know I’m photogenic, but I also know you can’t just rest on looks."

Now, for that enduring female mystery question: "What would you choose first – sex or chocolate?" Zeta-Jones sends me an are-you-joking? look while answering, "No contest whatsoever: sex. The only thing better than sex is sex with chocolate on top."

"Have you got up to anything like that recently?"

"I want to be in love all the time," she purrs. "I want to be like…" She flares her nostrils, lowers her eyelids and does Maria-Callas-in-the-throes-of-romantic-obsession. "I’ve let myself down so many times by just thinking that I’m falling in love. Then I see reason. Invariably, the guys I get off on, or the guys that are into me, have lives just as busy as mine. I’ve been single for quite a while and it’s great. I’m ready to wait for someone who’s going to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

"It’s taken me 15 years to get where I am and I haven’t even started," Zeta-Jones says when I ask her for her long-term career view. "I want to play women on emotional levels that even I’ve never been on, and, believe me, I’m like a rolling sea – up or down. I want to work with the contemporary equivalent of directors like Louis Malle and François Truffaut. They trusted beautiful, fascinating women like Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau to be sexy, to have the emotional attributes of full, real, complex beings. I don’t want to be a flash in the pan. I want to be Anne Bancroft. I want to be Gena Rowlands. I want a big life, not just a big career."

Full transcript of Cleo article, Catherine The Great, August 1999

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E.T. Online: I read that Steven Spielberg suggested you for the role of Elena. Is that true?

Catherine Zeta-Jones: That is true.

ETOL: How did that make you feel when you heard that?

Catherine: My agent called and said, "A very big director would like to meet you." Of course my mind went blank, I couldn't think of one. When he said it was Steven, it was like yeah, that's pretty big. I went up to meet him and he was charming and completely not intimidating. We went and had a meeting and he told me about the project, and that Martin Campbell was to direct it. He did and Martin did the screen test of me done in Mexico. Then I got the role. It was one of those great little stories.

ETOL: What did you think about Elena when you read the script? Did you have any apprehensions about playing her, or the physicality of the role?

Catherine: No, that was one of the attributes of it that I loved you know. To be able to get to do all that. I also liked that there was some substance to her as well. She wasn't just running around in pretty frocks. I love the emotional side of the story that goes with Anthony Hopkins [Don Diego de la Vega] and then the romance with Antonio Banderas [Zorro]. All that as well as the physicality was like, "Oh, this is going to be real fun."

ETOL: She wasn't your typical damsel in distress was she?

Catherine: I know we're getting a little bit bored of those damsels running around.

ETOL: So, you've got the sword playing, you've got physical challenges in this film. Have you had any practice with that in any
prior roles, or was that something that you had to learn?

Catherine: I've never done the sword play before. I'd danced before, I use to be in musical comedies. The horse riding, I had done a really bad job on a few movies. I fell off a few times. What we had was a really great four month intense kind of boot camp and physical rehearsal period. Everyday, every hour was jam packed in there. Two hours with Catherine and the horse. Two hours with Catherine and Antonio. Two hours of Catherine and Antonio dancing. Two hours of Catherine's voice training. It was a great physical routine to get into. So, by the time we got into shooting we'd really, one, got to know each other pretty well, and secondly had learned all these skills.

ETOL: How was it working with Antonio?

Catherine: Charming. He's a real giver as a person and as an actor. We had fun and we also worked and trained very hard for it. He was just very admirable. I only had one sword fight to do and he had like eight. We called our first fight the "sexy sword fight" and then we had sword fight one, two, three, four, five, six, you know, so we had to always keep on top of which one he was doing next. He was just brilliant.

ETOL: There's a kissing scene as well.

Catherine: Oh yes, yes, yes.

ETOL: Is Antonio a good kisser?

Catherine: A really good kisser, yeah.

ETOL: So, have you seen a final cut of the film?

Catherine: Yes, I have.

ETOL: What did you think?

Catherine: I enjoyed it. It's really hard, for me it is, to see myself on the big screen. I still haven't quite come to grips on how to deal with that. What I loved about the whole piece was that it really came together. All the different attributes that we wanted to put in, all the comedy parts and the tender real emotional parts, and then the physicality of it. It all came together. It all materialized in front
of me. It was like, "Wow. I never knew that they were going to
shoot it that way." I really loved the way it comes together. It's filled with a lot of things.

ETOL: What kind of audience do you think this will appeal to?

Catherine: Well of course I think the general thing is for fifteen-year-old boys, is what I hear. I go, "No, when you see the movie it's universal." My niece, who is nine-years-old, will love it. She can't wait. My nanna, my grandma will love it. It really has that universal appeal like Raiders did, you know like the Indiana Jones feel. It's a universal audience which is great, especially for the summer I think.

ETOL: Well great, I really enjoyed it.

Catherine: Well thank you very much.

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The Trouble with the Tabloids

This is a reprint of a Guardian article from the Media supplement of October 1997.

Three years ago, the People snapped Paul McGann greeting his friend Catherine Zeta Jones with a fleeting luvvie kiss. A full-scale
press hunt was launched to expose him. Paul and his wife Annie have lived with the repercussions ever since. Now, for the first time,
they tell Roy Greenslade about their nightmare and why the death of Princess Diana has prompted them to complain to the PCC.

There was surprising enthusiasm among tabloid editors for the proposed changes to their code of practice. They concede that they
might have "gone over the top" in harassing Princess Diana, but argue that hers was an isolated case. The industry's self regulatory
body, the Press Complaints Commission, broadly agrees, reiterating that invasions of privacy are rare. What the PCC means is that complaints are rare. Many victims of intrusion don't go to the PCC.

Here is just one example, a saga of press intrusion, harassment and intimidation, all based on an initial lie which stemmed from the
misguided activities of the paparazzi. That falsehood continues to be repeated in spite of on-the-record denials.

In one sense, it is an extraordinary story. Readers who have had the good fortune never to come into contact with newspapers will be
amazed. In another sense, seen from the perspective of all of us in the industry, it is very ordinary. Just another tabloid tale, an
indictment of all (including me) who are, or have been, tabloid journalists.

For three years, Annie and Paul McGann nursed a grievance against the tabloids, refusing to make a formal complaint about a string of incidents involving several daily and Sunday papers. They told PressWise, the ethics media body that helps people with their
complaints about print or broadcast journalism, but not the PCC. It was Diana's death which changed the McGanns' minds.

Eight days after the crash, Annie sent a lengthy description of their plight to PCC chairman Lord Wakeham. "I want the PCC to know
the full story," she wrote. "I want to complain officially about the behaviour of the press people we have encountered. I have not sent
the PCC this before because I did not trust the organisation to treat it in confidence. How can the public trust the PCC when it is
associated with the very editors who generate this problem in the first place?"

It began in the summer of 1994, when Paul McGann met Catherine Zeta Jones on the film set of Catherine The Great. Paul is a 37
year old actor with a fine track record in films and television. Trained at RADA, he portrayed The Monocled Mutineer on TV,
co-starred in the cult movie Withnail And I, and is the current Doctor Who. But he is a distinctly unstarry star, largely having
managed to keep his name out of the tabloid headlines.

Catherine, 27, has been a tabloid obsession since appearing in TV's The Darling Buds Of May. Pictures of her at premieres and
parties appear regularly in papers. As Paul has pointed out: "They are fixated with her body."

The pair became friends while filming in Germany and Austria. "Friends" as in mates; not lovers. While they were shooting in Berlin, Paul's wife Annie visited with their two young sons, Joseph, then five, and Jake, three, and thought Catherine "very sweet and
friendly." By chance, Catherine and Annie found themselves on the same flight back to London and got on so well that Catherine
confided in her about her personal problems.

A couple of months later, Paul began his next project, making a e BBC series about the Irish famine, The Hanging Gale. It also
involved his three brothers - Mark; Stephen and Joe - and was shot in the little Donegal town of Ramelton.

A week into filming, Paul flew off to London to do a voice-over, telling Annie he would be meeting Catherine for a chat and to pick up some pictures taken of them and their friends on the Catherine The Great set. He'd agreed to meet Catherine outside the office of a film industry insurance doctor near Sloane Square. When she emerged, she spotted Paul in his car, got in, and greeted him with a
traditional 'luvvie kiss'.

After a minute or two, they left the the car where it was and started to walk to a nearby hotel for afternoon tea. Catherine explained
that she couldn't be too long on a public street because she was often followed by freelance photographers. She was upset, she told
Paul, and had had a horrible day. She was getting a bad time from her record company because she had chosen to make another
film rather than concentrating on her singing. She was near to tears and Paul sympathetically put his arm around her shoulder.

Suddenly Catherine stopped. She had spotted a camera lens poking from behind a parked lorry. They turned around instantly and made for Paul's car to escape. As they pulled away from the kerb, they saw two men on a motorbike following them. After a 15
minute chase, Catherine told Paul to drop her off. "It's me they're after;" she told him, and she leaped out. The bikers pulled up next
to Catherine. One shouted: "We've caught you at it." These are the paparazzi who made Diana's life a misery.

Back in Donegal, Paul told Annie about the incident and then she and Catherine spoke on the phone. Annie says: "She was very
worried but I told her it was probably nothing." Her confidence was understandable. Neither Paul nor Catherine had spoken to a
reporter. How could a couple of pictures be a problem? Catherine, more experienced in tabloid wiles, was far from convinced. With
reason.

The first oddity was a late-night phone call to the house rented by the McGanns in Ramelton and answered by a friend of theirs,
coincidentally named Kath. A man's voice asked: "Is Catherine there?" When she replied, "yes ," he rang off.

Two days later a friend from London called Annie to say: "You're not going to believe this but...' It transpired that the People had filled pages one, two and three with "the story". It claimed that Paul had left Annie for Catherine and that they were planning to set up
home together.

The evidence was a grainy picture of the pair kissing in Paul's car (that fleeting luvvie kiss) and another picture of them in the street,
with Paul's consoling arm around Catherine's shoulder. In the background just happened to be a house-for-sale notice. It showed, said the paper, the couple "house-hunting in London's West End".

Paul later said: "I laughed for about five minutes, but once the smile was wiped off my face, I felt very nervous." He had every right to.
As Annie says: "It was the beginning of two weeks of hell which has had repercussions on our well-being ever since."

After phoning their families to assure them everything was okay, they started to receive worrying feedback. One of Paul's aunts in
Liverpool was attending mass when someone in the pew behind tapped her on the shoulder and said: "No smoke without fire, eh
Mary?"

That hit home. Annie and Paul grew increasingly upset. "I felt as if my marriage vows had been violated," says Annie. "But I didn't cry
until I saw they'd used a picture of us coming out of church on our wedding day three years before. Even that was taken without our
consent."

Soon the phone rang. A local paper reporter asked if the McGanns were living there. They had decided they didn't want to talk to
anyone, believing that they couldn't trust what papers would print. So Annie moved with her sons to another town, Rathmullen. It was
more difficult for Paul to hide. He was filming on the Ramelton quayside and it didn't take long for photographers and reporters to turn up.

But with four McGann brothers (looking somewhat alike), a sympathetic crew and supportive townspeople, Paul managed to elude the initial trawl by the local press and the stringers sent from Northern Ireland. Then the heavy mob from the nationals arrived.

Two News of the World men staked out the petrol station. Film set workers discovered that their radios and mobile phones were
being scanned. A freelance photographer from Belfast took up residence in the Bridge Bar, favourite watering hole for the film team.
Photographers climbed trees on the river bank opposite the main film location.

A Daily Mail reporter phoned Paul's agent in London and pleaded with her to persuade the McGanns to talk to her so that she could
flee "this horrid male scum" and return home because her sister was having a baby.

It just so happens that my wife and I live in Ramelton for half the year, and we were away during that period. But I soon heard about
the press hunt for 'Paul and Catherine'. To confuse reporters, the barman at the Salmon Inn pub even sent them on a wild goose
chase to our empty house. They ignored everyone who told them Ms Zeta Jones wasn't around.

One group of reporters hung around the crossroads in the centre of town, noting registration numbers and then following any car
likely to be connected to the production in the hope of finding Paul. Inexplicably, scores of pictures were taken of children. Annie
says: "We couldn't understand that until neighbours of the cottage we'd left later told us men had called at their houses with pictures
of children asking if any of them were Paul McGann's kids."

The McGanns' landlady, a school teacher in nearby Letterkenny, called to say reporters had been asking at local schools if the
McGann children were on the register. Annie says: "I felt trapped, and I was frightened that my children would become scared by
seeing how upset I was."

Instead of playing outside or enjoying Donegal's beautiful beaches, the boys were confined to the house. But the pack soon tracked
them down to their new hideaway and Annie found a good use for newspapers. She taped them over every window and while
reporters were knocking on the door she contacted the film unit's security man.

He blocked off the road and the family were smuggled out to another house until later that evening. By now, Paul's agent was
suggesting that the couple fly to London and have dinner in a well-known restaurant with Catherine and her partner, looking like the friends they are. Annie refused. "I will not play ball with any of them," she said.

That night a local farmer, Joe Crawford, told them a photographer was training his camera on the cottage from across a field and that
two Sun people had called at his house. Crawford said he told them: "Why don't you leave them alone?"

Knowing that was unlikely, the McGanns did another moonlight flit, to a house in the centre of Ramelton where Annie could turn the
tables by watching the journalists from behind net curtains while her children played safely in a walled garden.

Meanwhile, the McGanns' Bristol home was also a target for the local news agency and various papers.

A note pushed through the door by the News of the World offered Annie money "to tell your side of the story." Their cleaner arrived
and was offered cash if he would let photographers in to "borrow" pictures from the mantelpiece.

Reporters approached the vicar who married the McGanns at Cotham parish church, the Reverend Neville Boundy, demanding to see the wedding register.

In Donegal, the pressure to track down the McGanns or find Catherine intensified. The film unit's security man told Annie that a
female journalist had even slept with him in the vain hope of persuading him to lead her to the family. That woman's article was a
notorious fabrication, claiming that Paul was in a monastery and that Catherine, then filming in Cornwall, was gazing tearfully towards
Ireland (a geographical impossibility), because Paul hadn't sent her a birthday card.

After a week, the journalists and their bosses in London got bored with their lack of success and pulled out, but they didn't
disappear. A couple of weeks later they started arriving on the McGanns' doorstep in Bristol. They were ignored. A local agency man called persistently, trying to ingratiate himself with Paul by mentioning their joint Scouse background. He tried various tricks. If the couple agreed to have their picture taken in the park, he would head off the News of the World "who are on their way". When that
failed he sneered: "We'll get you one day when you're out Christmas shopping."

A freelance photographer, who had been refused permission to take pictures of the children on school grounds, attended the school
fete and snapped a shot of Paul with his sons. The Liverpudlian agency reporter, who joined the News of the World two years ago,
has called at regular intervals ever since and always been rebuffed. Paul has consistently refused in the last three years to be
interviewed by any papers involved in the Donegal drama. It hasn't stopped the lie being repeated about his relationship with
Catherine. All denials have been ignored. On February 20 this year, a Daily Mirror article stated: "Catherine has had a chequered love
life which included flings with actor Paul McGann and. . "

In July 1996, a Daily Mail piece asserted that "Catherine had been linked with. . . Paul McGann. . . while they were making Catherine
The Great, before returning to his wife and children." In the Daily Mirror in May 1996, another piece said Catherine was spotted
kissing Paul in a car. "Paul left his wife Annie and two sons, and he and Catherine were rumoured to be house-hunting in West
London. But the curse struck again and he went back to his wife, vowing to save the marriage."

Yet in the Mirror in September 1995, Catherine was asked about her "affair" with Paul and was quoted as saying "forcibly" that "it's
absolute rubbish. I have suffered a lot of intrusions and I resent many of the pictures and words that have resulted."

Then comes a telling phrase. "But if my objections are listed too often, it looks as though I'm complaining and no one wants that."

It couldn't be put better. To complain that something is utterly false is to be tagged a whinger. People like Catherine, Paul and Annie
are expected to accept the situation. Celebrities, and those related to them, are considered by tabloids to have no rights. Those who
live by publicity (even if they don't seek it) must die by publicity. It goes with the territory

Tough, but that's just how it is.

I know some of the reporters who figure in this story They aren't especially bad. Even though the people of Ramelton protected the
McGanns, they liked most of the journalists too. The sad truth is that the news agenda of tabloids has become warped. Where was
the public interest in the story? Why spend vast resources on such a trivial matter? Anyway, as papers should have quickly realised,
they had got the wrong end of the stick. The People story was a gross fiction.

A PCC spokesman argues that the moral of Annie's tale is that people should complain to them as quickly as possible if such
intrusions occur.

Mike Jempson, a director of PressWise, counters that it demonstrates the lack of public confidence in the current system of self regulation.

He says: "If people don't complain then what's been printed is regarded as true and remains in cuttings files for re-use by other
papers. But many people are traumatised by the experience of press intrusion and harassment. They don't want to put their trust in a body set up and funded by their persecutors.

"Some have to reveal intimate personal details in order to disprove false stories, and the PCC cannot guarantee that such information
will not find its way into the public domain."

At Annie and Paul McGann's request, we have not published pictures of them or Catherine Zeta Jones, nor the related
newspaper cuttings.

Thanks to Alex and Mary Ellen for the text of this article

 

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Sex-symbol on the Threshold to popularity

After more years as a british paparazzi-victim, the dark beauty, Catherine Zeta-Jones (29), moved to Hollywood. And now she's the whole worlds new sex-symbol.

The ticket to fame came for Zeta-Jones, with the movie "The Mask of Zorro", where she played together with Antonio Banderas, and the audience really enjoyed the movie. So now she's on the doorstep to something big.

- »Steven Spielberg saw me on the television mini-series "Titanic", and within a week I was at a rehearsal in Mexico. I was terrified! I thought: Now that I've gotten the part, how on earth shall I perform it?«, says Zeta-Jones to Maxim.

She did the part quite well, because now the Wales-born actress can choose almost any part she would like. First she was oferred a part in the thriller "The Haunting of Hill House", playing against Liam Neeson. And then she's going to play an art-thief against the much older Sean Connery in the movie "Entrapment".

- He's wonderful, says Zeta-Jones.

But the feeling of being world famous isn't new for Zeta-Jones. As an actor in a row of more or less succesfull movie-productions in England, she was constantly a victim of attention from the aggressive press. And she's handling that quite well too.

- »I used to throw things at people, kick photographers and knock out the doormen. One time I Crashed into a lamp post, after a car chase with paparazzi-photographers. The medias obsession of my life was really out of hands«, says Zeta-Jones to Maxim.

She has for a long time ago realized that she's very attractive, and she has no problem about understanding that she's being seen as a sex-symbol. She realized this when she were 19:

- »I went into a restaurant in Paris to meet a stage manager, and suddenly I felt like this really self-confident woman. I just knew that i had some sort of sexual force. That was a bizar feeling, Zeta-Jones finishes.

 

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More Than Face Value

Catherine Zeta-Jones is beautiful, yes. But her co-stars, including Connery and Hopkins, say there's much more to her star power.

Can we be honest here? It's hard to find anyone in Hollywood these days who doesn't have a crush on Catherine Zeta-Jones. After swashbuckling her way into Antonio Banderas' heart in last summer's hit "The Mask of Zorro," the 29-year-old Welsh actress is capping off a spectacular calendar year with the high-style heist caper "Entrapment," which opens today, and director Jan de Bont's summer horror spectacular "The Haunting.".
Her directors and leading men--including international sex symbols Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, "The Haunting's" Liam Neeson, and Banderas--swoon like sophomores when talking about her.
"One of the most beautiful women I have ever had the pleasure of working with," Connery, her producer and co-star on "Entrapment," faxes from Scotland.
"The moment I saw her in 'Zorro,' I wanted to make a movie with her," De Bont says with a giggle during a break in post-production for "Haunting," which opens in July. "A lot of actresses are talented, but what's unique about her is: Whatever you do with the camera, it can't help loving her."
Hopkins, her co-star on "Zorro," gushes: "She's beautiful, passionate, has tremendous sex appeal and, most importantly, hasn't lost her Welsh accent."
Zeta-Jones is building an industry rep for "professionalism" and, yes, that undeniable sex appeal that's one part girl next door, one part girl your mother warned you about. The self-described "star-struck girl from Wales" who was British tap-dancing champ at 13, is one minute pouting over her genuine disappointment that she couldn't make it to all the Oscar parties. The next, she assumes a woman's command of the moment and a natural star's ability to transform a hotel suite interview and photo session with a lusty, knowing laugh that makes it all seem like a stolen tête-à-tête.
Yet most American moviegoers haven't the slightest idea where she came from or who she really is. And Zeta-Jones couldn't be happier about it.
"Entrapment," Zeta-Jones co-stars as an American insurance investigator who keeps the audience and master thief Connery guessing through plot twists and double crosses, while stopping time with an erotic ballet through a grid of laser beams. It's one of those indelible screen moments, like Rita Hayworth discarding a glove in "Gilda" or Michelle Pfeiffer crooning "Makin' Whoopie" atop a baby grand in "The Fabulous Baker Boys," in which an actress announces herself with the sensual insouciance of a star.
On screen, she exudes both exotic glamour and a healthy athleticism. In person, she trumps herself, proving a natural beauty with the kind of earthy, playful humor that turns wherever she is into a party.
"She's got that X-factor," Hopkins says before leaving Los Angeles for the "Mission: Impossible 2" set in Australia. "Lauren Bacall had it.
Audrey Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, they all had that great style and poise. And Catherine's got it." Zeta-Jones smiles with pleasure but also a survivor's detachment at the Hollywood heat that has placed at her disposal two publicists and an entire suite complete with flowers, baby grand piano and ocean view. In
a screwball moment, she laughingly jostles the reporter, impersonating a paparazzo, then launches into a savvy analysis of her rising Hollywood stock and the vagaries of the star market.
One thing Zeta-Jones knows is that she's become a salable commodity. In billboards and ads for "Entrapment," it's Zeta-Jones' slinky figure in a leotard that takes center stage--with the legendary Connery off to the side.
"I lived through this once," she states with a soft lilt that can't hide her hard-won experience. "I was a celebrity over in the U.K. [as star of the hit TV series "The Darling Buds of May"], and it was a really big problem. Everyone forgot I was an actress. All my hard work, all my theater experience, all the things I gave up because I wanted to succeed in this business and improve my craft was reduced to 'Oh, she's got big breasts and she's a girl!' Well, I don't want to be on 'Hollywood Squares.' "

Working Past the Reputation the Tabloids Have Given Her A star at 20, her celebrity high was an invitation to the tabloids to take her less than seriously, and for a while Zeta-Jones out on the town was a staple for the paparazzi. "There was a point when going partying was much more fun than working on a scene," she admits. "I kind of lost it a bit, but I never lost my commitment to what I wanted to do, even after they wrote me off." Having embraced her as a party girl, her native Britain resisted her as a serious actress, and the tabloids collectively scoffed when she came to America, declaring she was on a mission to save her ailing career. Back home, she was over, yesterday's spice, a has-been at 24. Convinced she had "something to give that they didn't get in Britain," she worked for two years in relative anonymity before Steven Spielberg spotted her sinking on the television "Titanic" and cast her in the international hit "The Mask of Zorro." One swipe of Zorro's blade and she put the entire industry on guard.
"The great thing about 'Zorro' for me, especially in America, was that no one knew where I came from," she says. "That role opened up perceptions. There wasn't an 'English actress' sign above my head that flashed, 'Put me in a corset and give me a cup of tea.' " At first, her role as the daughter of a 19th century Spanish nobleman had many people assuming she was Latina, a mistake she embraces. "It's great!" she says and laughs. "I'm glad the accent was convincing." Now that she has starred in two big studio pictures with a third on the way, the actress still gets asked if she's part Latina, Asian, Italian, depending on what part of the world she's in.
"I know she's Welsh, but she has the most amazing face," says De Bont. "It's universal. There's something virtually every culture can relate to."
It's expected that if international markets relate as well to her pictures as they do to her face, Zeta-Jones will be one of the few actresses to transcend the industry heat that melts the wings off most next-big-things.
Connery lauds her as "one of the most professional" actresses he's worked with, "which, in my book, is greater than beauty... almost." "Her professionalism is key," agrees De Bont, the man who made
Sandra Bullock a star in "Speed." "It's one thing to be beautiful and talented, but I hate complaining actors who whine about everything. The only time Catherine complained was when her face was swollen because of MSG, but she was still willing to work. The whole crew, the cast and the studio, for that matter, loved working with her."
Hopkins also gives her high marks. "She's always on time, knows her lines, and there's never any fuss. As long as she keeps her heart and her head, she can do it all."

Though Things Look Good, She Remains a Realist While grateful for the votes of confidence, Zeta-Jones is a realist.
"Somebody in my position right now is just on the cusp of a lot of things--or not. It could so easily go away. So many people arrive, especially in action movies, and just disappear."
So she's not banking on building her career off the athleticism that comes from years as a dancer and gymnast. "I take these roles because I love the physicality and I can do it," she explains. "The day will come, and I'm sure it's imminent, when I won't be able to do gymnastics off the ceiling, and these roles won't be coming my way.
"But take away the action in 'Entrapment' and you have a two-person, character-driven movie, so on another level, I bring more as an actress than just my body."
Hopkins, who co-starred with actresses Emma Thompson and Jodie Foster in their Academy Award-winning roles ("Howards End" and "The Silence of the Lambs," respectively), says that Zeta-Jones "wouldn't be where she is now on those looks alone. She's a passionate actress, and I think she's terrific. I sound like an old granddad, but if she's selective about her roles and keeps her nose clean, she can be around a long time."
Having lived through the supernova of celebrity once, Zeta-Jones is taking the long view.
"I had a conversation with Sean about this," she says. "I asked him what I should do next to sustain the passion and longevity he's enjoyed.
He said, 'You can't wait for the next big movie.' He's right, you're not going to get better at your craft, or have the balls to do certain things, unless you get out there. You have to train and keep everything in tune."
That training leads her next to a cameo role as John Cusack's ex-lover in Stephen Frear's "High Fidelity" simply because "it's a different kind of character, very bohemian." After that, she wants to do a project her brother is trying to put together in England and a role in a friend's film school short.
Then there is the promotional trail for both new movies, a part of the business she seems to accept with good grace. And if De Bont has his way, she'll star in a science-fiction epic he's working on with her in mind.
"Then I'm going to take a little break to put back into myself what I've been giving out," she says. "The two hours of popcorn are my job, and I love it, but I'm looking for another life as well. I don't have a love life
right now. For quite a while, I needed the security of a partner, but now it's OK for me to be a single woman. I understand that if someone's special enough, you make the time, but personally, based on past experience, there's nothing worse than being at dinner with somebody you're interested in while counting the hours until you have to get up to go to work."
Recently, she's been speed-reading scripts in search of a romantic comedy but admits that a good one is "the hardest thing to find. I don't know if my humor stinks, whether I have a different humor than everyone else here or if the scripts just stink."
With an entourage that these days consists of her close-knit family, she tries to keep stardom in perspective. "I've already gone through a really hard time personally and professionally that taught me a lot of good lessons," she relates with equanimity. "I've been so close to losing my sense of reality, but something always pinches me and brings me around. "I went to ShoWest [the movie exhibitor convention in Las Vegas] this year on a private jet, and I got a 24-hour bug. From the moment I boarded until the next morning, I threw up. The jet was great, but the toilet is a very humbling thing."

 

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Zeta's Wish List

15/8 - 1999 16.15 (danish time)

Catherine Zeta-Jones has made a serious impression on
genre moviegoers since her eye-catching turn in The Mask
of Zorro last summer, but she isn't content to sit on her
laurels. The actress recently told Eon magazine about the
film talent that she'd most like to collaborate with in what is
sure to be a long and prosperous career.

"I'd love to work with Scorsese," she informed the site. "I've
always wanted to be a New Yorker and be part of that New
York genre of film makers. I'd love to find the way that
Scorsese worked with De Niro on a number of projects,"
Jones remarked, adding that she'd also like to find a young
director with whom she could collaborate on a number of
projects.

 

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Catherine Zeta-Jones on sex-scenes

26/4 - 1999 19.30 (danish time)

Hollywood sexpot Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask of Zorro) says there's nothing particularly erotic about performing in sex scenes for the camera.
"Sex scenes aren't erotic until you see them on screen," the actress tells May's Loaded magazine. "It's very technical. Like, 'Well my nose goes this way, which way are you going to kiss?' "
Zeta-Jones, who stars in the upcoming movies Entrapment (with Sean Connery) and The Haunting (with Liam Neeson), says she's okay with nude scenes in movies as long as they're not gratuitous, and as long as they don't involve real-life couples.
"The only thing that really freaks me out is when I see a real-life couple making love onscreen," says Zeta-Jones. "Like seeing Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise making love. I feel like I'm being voyeuristic into their bedroom." So Catherine's not advised to see Stanley Kubricks "Eyes Wide Shut".

 

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Zeta-Jones on motherhood, Michael and doing Traffic while six months pregnant. By Paul Fischer

	Catherine Zeta-Jones: "I'll be showing this film to my son as soon as I can."

Catherine Zeta-Jones is no stranger to an avaricious media. Meeting the press in L.A. for the first time since her highly publicised wedding, the beautiful 31-year old Welsh lass recalls that before finding Hollywood stardom her experience as a television star in the UK "kind of prepared me, in a way, for what goes on: for this microscopic, insatiable appetite for any information - truth, lies, or any plain old gossip."

Her new husband Michael Douglas apologised to her for the US media's fascination with the private lives of the stars. But the actress insists that her experience of the tabloids back in Blighty certainly gave her "a kind of water-off-a-duck's-back attitude to what goes on."

She adds: "I'm sure that will all change come two years time when I have to take my son to the park and I have to try and explain to him why there's 20 people with cameras running after us. I hope that the frenzy will die down and he will not have to sacrifice any of the good things in his early years."

Things came reached frenzied proportions when the couple married in New York but, crazy as it was, Zeta-Jones glows when recalling that memorable event. Paparazzi be damned.

"It was just amazing for me. I remember everything about it, which was one of my big concerns, that I would wake up the next day and go: Did we get married? But our wedding was very beautiful, romantic and elegant. It was formal in one way, then just a wild party the way we like to have fun with our best friends and family. So it was very homespun in that way, which is exactly what I wanted."

For Catherine, she remembers not knowing "whether to burst out laughing or burst out crying, and then I saw other people's faces and they were smiling - so I burst out laughing."

Baby Dylan

Before marrying Douglas, Zeta-Jones was already dealing with motherhood and the birth of her son Dylan. There can be no doubt that motherhood and marriage have changed her outlook on life.

"Even when I was doing Traffic and carrying Dylan, a lot of the emotions and instincts that I used in my character, came from this instinct of the lioness wanting to protect and nurture my new little life. When he was born it just blew my mind away that a complete little stranger would fill me with this overwhelming desire to nurture and protect him, and I would go to such big lengths to do that."

"With Michael and our relationship, there will be a point when everyone will have their knives out, and be publicly looking to photograph or write something that is detrimental to our relationship and us, or how we feel about each other. And those are things I just have to deal with, because the spotlight is so focussed on it. But it's changed my life completely."

The pregnant performance

The actress first knew she was pregnant when Steven Soderbergh asked her to do his ensemble cast in the drug trafficking drama Traffic and so had to share that confidential stuff with him. "I really wanted to do it and work with him, so I suggested playing it pregnant, because it would give the character a vulnerability and would also up the stakes for her."

She says that doing the film pregnant grounded her. "It stripped away preconceptions that you start to have yourself, because to make money for the studio you play a certain kind of woman. So I was flattered that Steven wanted me in my six months pregnant glory and wanted me as me. It liberated me as an actor and forced me to go places I'd never had the chance to go before."

Traffic is a patchwork of stories that evokes the high-stakes, high-risk world of the drug trade, as seen through a series of inter-related stories. Some are highly personal, and some are filled with intrigue and danger.

A Mexican policeman finds himself caught in a web of corruption; a pair of undercover D.E.A agents work in the sordid and dangerous world of San Diego dealers; a wealthy drug baron living in upscale, suburban America is arrested and learns how quickly his unknowing and pampered wife (played by Catherine) takes over his business; and the U.S. president's new anti-drug czar, an Ohio State Supreme Court Justice, (Michael Douglas) must deal with his increasingly drug-addicted teenage daughter.

Fans of the actress will be astonished as to the complexity of her work here, and the character she plays, a woman who goes through a subtle but astounding, transformation. "I loved going to all those emotional places. Looking at the movie now in its entirety, Steven did a great job for my arc and character."

Catherine on drugs

Asked about her own thoughts on the drug trade, Zeta-Jones says that, as in the film, "you have bad people, who sell 'em, have bad people who take 'em and somewhere governments are turning a blind eye as to how it's getting in. What this film has done for me and I hope for everyone who sees it, is puts it all on the table and doesn't define it via a social status or ethnic group.

"I'd always assumed it happened way down town in those areas that I never go to after dark and it's a nasty problem that doesn't affect my life. But now, as you can see from the movie and what Steven did in telling these different stories, is to show that it's happening in palatial homes. It's happening right next door to you. It's happening to the A-students in the country. Yes, it's happening on the streets of Mexico."

The film has also given her another perspective on motherhood. "I'll be showing this film to my son as soon as I can. Even the optimist in me looks at what can happen fifteen years down the track," she explains. "He is the son of a famous mum, dad and grandfather. His self-identity can be knocked constantly, because he may have to work harder to make a name for himself because a lot of people will have an attitude of: 'Oh, he's from that family and it's an easy ride for him'."

"They're at the most vulnerable when they're like that. To the outside world, it's like: 'That kid's mixed up with that family. He's got everything he wants and what is he? A junkie!' It terrifies me that one of the lines in the movie is: 'Kids can get drugs easier than they can get a beer.'"

Life After Traffic

Next up for Zeta-Jones is the ensemble comedy America's Sweethearts, which, ironically, deals with the frenzied world of movie press junkets, a world she now knows too well - although that wasn't always the case.

"I just remember going to my first press junket, when I had to beg to be interviewed. The only reason I came to LA was to promote The Phantom and my agent had to beg, borrow and steal from Paramount to get me a ticket to go to that junket, but he wangled this somehow and I remember nobody had anything to say to me as if I was invisible. I'd sit there in this round table situation and not one question would come my way."

How times have changed, she adds smilingly. Robert Downey Jnr was all set to be playing her "Latin lover" in the film, but following his arrest again on drug charges, his role may be recast. "Obviously we're all really devastated about Robert. A guy with such enormous talent...", she trails off.

From Hollywood hills back to Welsh valleys?

Zeta-Jones may well be entrenched as part of Hollywood royalty, but her Welsh brogue reminds one of her ethnicity. The actress concedes that she is culturally divided. "I'm still a British citizen and there is a part of me that loves both cultures. I came here to be in the movie industry, joining a long line of girls from all over the world who come from similar places to do the same thing. I'm just thrilled that Hollywood opened its arms to me and accepted me, first to play someone who's Spanish, then to play an American, and as a British actor that opened another world up for me.'

"At the same time, I still have strong roots in my home country and I want my son to know those roots. I think there's a European feel to this movie, and I would love nothing more than to do some European movies again."

She also hopes to work on screen with her husband in the foreseeable future. "We're trying to find a script right now, though I always find it weird when couples off-screen are couples on screen. It seems voyeuristic, but if we can find a specific project, I think it would have to be comedic."

Life has been like a dream come true from this young lady from Wales. She has a staunchly supportive family, though does recall that her "mother was like dying when she had to walk down the aisle and there were all these film stars in the audience. She nearly had a nervous breakdown." But at least, luminous star as she is, Catherine still has "the ability to talk intimately with my family and they haven't become star struck by it all." Unlike the rest of the world.

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Catherine Zeta Jones

 

 

By TOM JULIAN Fallon Worldwide CATHERINE ZETA-JONES This Welsh-born actress had many international accolades prior to her arrival in the United States. Her film roles have ranged from sexy heroine to the singing murderess that garnered her a Supporting Actress win for CHICAGO. The 71st Annual Academy Awards® For her first Oscar walk paparazzi found this exotic and relatively unknown beauty photoworthy and fashionably perfect. The red strapless gown was designed by Versace and adorned artistically in crystals and beads. The 73rd Annual Academy Awards® A Hollywood original, ZETA-JONES was personally fitted by Donatella Versace for the all-black strapless beaded bustier with a full-fitted skirt and two kick pleats. Her aquamarine necklace was courtesy of H. Stern. The 75th Annual Academy Awards® Another vision in Versace. A dark chocolate and black chiffon gown was designed with hand-draped sleeves and embroidered with jet beads and bronze Swarovski crystals.