Catherine Zeta-Jones

A role changed her life, that of Elena Montero in La máscara del Zorro . There is a before and after since her overwhelming presence lit the frames of Martin Cambell’s film. But beauty alone does not open the door to fame. Before, Catherine Jones -her real name of hers- had already fought many fights. She was born on September 25, 1969 in Mumbles, a small Welsh town very close to Swansea, the industrial city where the poet and playwright Dylan Thomas was born . Despite her archetypal Latino features, her British origin seems indisputable: an Irish mother and a Welsh father, they leave no room for doubt.

His first steps in theater date back to the age of four, when he played the title role in Annie , a production of the Catholic church in his hometown. She there she learned dance and sing (according to Anthony Hopkins she has a beautiful voice). She at 10 years old she participated in Bugsy Malone and at 14 she participated in Monkees . This last interpretation was a radical change in her career, since the producers of the company were enthusiastic about her and later, when Catherine was 17 years old, they offered her to work in London in the play 42nd Street , already as a professional.

His first appearance in the cinema dates back to 1990, when Catherine was 20 years old. The French director Philippe De Broca took her to her country to play Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights (1990) . Returning to London, following a role in Out of Blue (1991) opposite Ewan McGregor , she gained the biggest success of her own with the television series The Darling Buds of May . From that moment she became a “sex symbol” in the United Kingdom and she began to suffer continuous harassment from the paparazzi: “every time I had coffee with a man, she became my new boyfriend.” It was then that she decided to try her luck on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the land of opportunities a new life began. She lived in Malibu and they say that one of his great pleasures was running on the beach. At that time he combined his appearances in the cinema with television. On the big screen we could see her in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), Blue Juice (1995) and The Phantom (1996). But her television was her springboard to the Hollywood Olympus. After The Return of the Native (1994), The Cinder Path (1994) and Catherine the Great (1995), Steven Spielberg was dazzled by her role as Isabella Paradine in the Titanic series (1996) and convinced Martin Campbellto give her the role of Elena in The Mask of Zorro (1998). She was starting a star.

But 1998 also marked his personal life: he met Michael Douglas at the Deauville Festival and the crush was mutual. Both were born on the same day but with a difference of twenty-five years! They married in 1999 and in 2000 their son Dylan Michael was born. The family would be completed in 2003 with the birth of her daughter Carys. They all live happily in Los Angeles. Before, in the professional field, she had shared the bill with Sean Connery in The Trap , another of his star roles. She later intervened in The Den (1999), High Fidelity (2000) and Traffic (2000), winner of five Oscars and for which she earned 3 million dollars. Without a doubt, this movieSteven Soderbergh includes some of his best work, where he showed that he could be more than just a pretty face. However, her moment of glory would still come, and there he would take advantage of her beauty. After the discreet The couple of the year , along with Julia Roberts and John Cusack , she played her most memorable role, that of Velma Kelly from the musical Chicago (2002) , the work of the British Rob Marshall . The interventions of Zeta-Jones –a lover of soul– were truly memorable, and her self-confidence singing and dancing earned her the Oscar for best supporting actress. A great future was opening up at her feet.

The brunette actress then began to chain juicy jobs in big movies. In 2003 she made use of all her seductive capacity to dazzle the public and her partner George Clooney in the fantastic Intolerable Cruelty (2003), a comedy by the Coen brothers. She then put herself under the orders of Steven Spielberg himself in The Terminal (2004), where she was a stewardess who fell in love with the hung (pun intended) Tom Hanks . After repeating with Clooney that same year in the charade Ocean’s Twelve , she reprized her successful role as Elena de la Vega, to whom she owed so much, to star in The Legend of Zorro.(2005), again with Banderas. Two years later she premiered two very interesting and quite successful films. No Reservations was a solid and faithful remake of the Danish film Delicious Martha , while The Last Great Magician recreated the life of the great illusionist Houdini.

Perhaps because he had to face serious personal problems, his roles then began to be more secondary. In 2011, she admitted to suffering from bipolar disorder that required a period of internment, and she also had to see how the son of her husband, Cameron Douglas, was accused of drug trafficking and ended up in jail. In the movies she appeared in the infamous My Second Time and Rock of Ages , and also in the somewhat better though understated comedy A Good Catch . But 2013 started off on a very good footing for her and may be the year of her recovery. After the interesting display of political noir in The plot (Broken City) , she played Dr. Siebert in the crime drama Side Effects, directed by his old friend Soderbergh.