Catherine Zeta-Jones: Woman with a Past

When Catherine Zeta-Jones turned the heat up in Hollywood with her fiery turn in The Mask of Zorro, it seemed as if she'd arrived fully formed out of nowhere. But it didn't happen that way at all.

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Who is that? The question reverberated throughout Hollywood the minute the first photo spreads of her started to appear in magazines in the buildup to 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? Even in portraits, 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, Claudia Cardinale and Natalie Wood. Who was she? And where had she come from?

Even as The Mask of Zorro hit theaters and the name Catherine Zeta-Jones became associated with the spectacular beauty who traded en gardes and double entendres with Antonio Banderas, the question--who is she? --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 costar with him in the big-budget romantic thriller he was producing, Entrapment. Where on earth had this creature been hiding until now? Was she a former model? Had she been concocted in a test tube on another planet? Who was Catherine Zeta-Jones?

The answer is, as it turns out, rather complicated. She had not, for one thing, arrived Birth of Venus-style with The Mask of Zorro. We had actually seen Zeta-Jones before. We just hadn't taken proper notice of her. She'd been the slithery villainess in that expensive misfire The Phantom. She'd been Thomas Hardy's tempest-tossed heroine in the Hallmark Hall of Fame's The Return of the Native. She'd been an aristocratic beauty aboard a ship bound for a watery grave in CBS's Titanic. But there was far more to the story of Catherine Zeta-Jones than that. What most people didn't know, even after The Mask of Zorro had put her in Hollywood's official spotlight, was that Zeta-Jones had already lived a life in the spotlight. She'd been a star long before Hollywood decided to declare her one.

Catherine Zeta-Jones was born 29 years ago in Swansea, Wales, a fishing town that is also the birthplace of Dylan Thomas and Anthony Hopkins. The daughter of a loving family that included one older and younger brother, and was headed by a seamstress mother and a candy factory manager father, she was a performer from the start. She wowed fellow villagers as the 11-year-old lead in a production of Annie and at 13 starred in a West End production of the musical Bugsy Malone. At 15, she got herself cast in a bus-and-truck tour of The Pajama Game. By 16, she'd been tapped by legendary stage maestro David Merrick to take over the lead in his all-singing, all-dancing West End smash 42nd Street. What might have been a career that was half Rita Hayworth, half Ann Miller turned into something else altogether when Zeta-Jones was cast, at age 19, as the buxom, dazzling daughter of a decadent '50s family in the sexy, nostalgic British TV series T_he Darling Buds of May_.

Unheard of in America, The Darling Buds was hugely popular all over Great Britain. Overnight, 23 million Sunday evening viewers seized on the young beauty's ripe looks and minx-like allure. Catherine Zeta-Jones became a national obsession, Britain's perfect antidote to the barrage of Persian Gulf War coverage, and during the show's three-year reign, her entire life became fodder for gossip. British tabloids--pit bulls that make their U.S. counterparts look like lapdogs--were rabid in their pursuit of her; they followed her day and night, sifted through her trash and set up surveillance equipment outside her house. The young overnight sensation got eaten alive by celebrity. And after she'd been chewed up, she got spat out.

When I meet Zeta-Jones in Pacific Palisades, where she owns a home not far from those of Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and her village-mate and old friend Anthony Hopkins, I am, naturally, curious about the months she just spent filming Entrapment in places like 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-budge_t The Haunting of Hill House_. But I'm most curious about what, exactly, went on in London that led Zeta-Jones to uproot herself and move to Los Angeles.

In case you're wondering, up close Zeta-Jones is a full-on stunner: all statuesque 68 inches of her are groomed and dressed as if the studio system were still in full force and she'd been taught that being a movie star requires looking like one. While she pointedly pretends not to notice the numbers 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. "America seems to breed that, and whoever's doing it, let's isolate the gene and cut it out.

"Listen," she continues, warming to her theme. "I used to do that no-makeup, 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 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, 'Oh bollocks! Can't I just wear my Gucci clogs? What do you mean my character wouldn't wear them? I wear them.' Only when I started going to auditions as myself, dolled up, did I get work." She chases this mouthful with a roaring, full-bodied laugh.

Realizing already that Zeta-Jones is fully prepared to provide a lively version of the previous existence that made her Hollywood ascent more the resurrection of, rather than the birth of, a star, I decide to gel right to the subject: "So how did your career in England go haywire alter you became famous with The Darling Buds of May?"

Zeta-Jones shudders at the mention of that bit 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.

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