So, Catherine Zeta-Jones is gorgeous, obviously. But that's not the most incredible thing about her.
_____________________________________
The 28-year-old Welsh-born actress also has a mouth on her. She was at one time, for example, in the habit of referring to herself as "the original Princess of Wales, but without the bulimia." She summarized America with these words: "Generally, people here seem to be on Prozac, and sometimes I wish I was." Today she's in first-rate verbal form, too. While wrapping her legs around her neck to prove her ease with tantric yoga, she gulps, "I'm still not wining, dining and 69-ing the stars."
What Zeta Jones is doing is working her romantic just-off-the-moors wiles on Hollywood. In case you can't quite place her, Zeta Jones was the femme fatale pilot who slunk around The Phantom in a catsuit making good use of her Welsh brogue. She also played the witchy temptress in Hallmark Hall of Fame's The Return of the Native. Her highest-profile appearance, though, will surely be her starring turn opposite Antonio Banderas in the upcoming The Mask of Zorro, in which she plies her seductive powers in a sword-fighting scene that leaves Antonio Banderas's costume in shreds.
Being as how Banderas is precious goods--not only to the studio but to his wife, Melanie Griffith--did Zeta Jones worry about cutting too close to the bare essentials? "I told Melanie she had to buy me a lot of Gucci clothes so that I wouldn't do any serious harm to Antonio with my sword. And she said, OK," the actress laughs.
Zeta Jones apparently won over Banderas himself at her audition, in which she exclaimed to director Martin Campbell, "Can you please direct me better? For God's sake, man, get it together! You got a lot of money to make this movie--direct, direct." What was Banderas's reaction to this? "Antonio said, 'That's my girl. We're going to get on fine.'" Zeta Jones's spiritedness took a different approach on the set--patience and tough perseverance. She didn't balk at the daily horseback lessons or the sword-fighting trials; she tolerated the endless hairstyling that gave her migraines; and she endured the corset that suffocated her ("You can't even loosen it to have another tamale for lunch").
In case you hadn't surmised this, Zeta Jones--who at one time was engaged to Braveheart's Angus McFadyen--has definite opinions about what she wants in a romantic partner. She prefers dating rituals here to those in Wales: "Where I come from, it's like, 'Would you like a pint of Guinness and pack of crisps?'" Here, she appreciated her outing on a Learjet ("We just flew around"). She's certainly accessible, in her fashion, to such invitations; she drives a Range Rover with a cell phone, and availed herself generously of the perks that doing _Zorro _for a Japanese-owned studio afforded her. "I got Sony everything," she says. "It's like, you can beep me, page me, fax me, e-mail me. You can do all these things and then I'll decide whether I'm going to get back."
If a guy is her type, she says she's likely to love him up by calling him "angel chops"--and if he's not, he'll know he's getting the shaft when she informs him, "I'm really not interested in listening to the bollocks that's coming out of your mouth." She does not care for men "with egos the size of their whatevers." Oh, and don't try to smooth talk her, either: "I don't like liars. I don't like duplicitous little shits. The thing that really gets me going is duplicity. I can't bear it." You have to wonder who Zeta Jones will date in Hollywood when she sums up her kind of guy: "I like a real man--not stupid, crazy, or trying to be hip."
One last question. What was Banderas's sexiest accessory as Zorro--his whip, his cape, his mask, or his stallion? "His mask," answers Zeta Jones, "because that hides a multitude of sins."
_____________________________________
Wolf Schneider