Catherine Zeta Jones, CBE (pronounced /ˈziːtə/ "zeeta"; born 25 September 1969), now hyphenated as Catherine Zeta-Jones, is a Welsh actress, currently based in the United States. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of UK and US television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, Ocean's Twelve and Entrapment in the late 1990s. She won an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of the musical Chicago. In 2010 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Desiree in A Little Night Music.She was born Catherine Zeta Jones in Swansea, South Wales to Patricia (née Fair), an Irish seamstress, and David James Jones (b. 1946), a Welsh sweet factory owner. Her name stems from those of her grandmothers — her maternal grandmother, Catherine Fair, and her paternal grandmother, Zeta Jones (1917 – 14 August 2008).
Zeta-Jones was raised Catholic. After her parents won £100,000 at Bingo in the 1980s, they moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, an upper middle class area of Swansea. Jones left the private Dumbarton House School early, to further her acting ambitions without obtaining O levels. She then attended The Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick, west London, for a full-time three-year course in musical theatre.
Catherine Zeta-Jones's stage career began in childhood. She often performed at friends' and family functions, and was part of a local dance troupe, The Hazel Johnson School of Dance, which rehearsed at St Alban's church, Treboeth. Zeta-Jones made her professional acting debut when she played the lead in Annie, a production at Swansea Grand Theatre. When she was 14, Mickey Dolenz cast her as Tallulah in Bugsy Malone. She then went on, at the age of 17 in 1986, to a part in the chorus of The Pajama Game at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester starring Paul Jones and Fiona Hendley. The show subsequently toured the UK and then, in 1987, Zeta-Jones starred in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Zeta-Jones was cast in the leading role after the actress playing Peggy Sawyer and the understudy fell ill. She also played Mae Jones in the Kurt Weill opera Street Scene with the English National Opera at the London Coliseum Theatre in 1989. Once the show closed, the actress traveled to France, where she received the lead role in French director Philippe de Broca's Les 1001 Nuits [1001 Nights] (also known as Sheherazade), her feature film debut.
Her singing and dancing ability suggested a promising future, but it was in a straight acting role, as Mariette in the successful British television adaptation of H. E. Bates' The Darling Buds of May, that brought her to public attention and made her a British tabloid darling. She briefly flirted with a musical career, beginning with a part in the 1992 album Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of Spartacus, from which the single "For All Time" was released in 1992. It reached #36 in the UK charts. She went on to release the singles "In the Arms of Love", "I Can't Help Myself", and a duet with David Essex, "True Love Ways", reaching #38 in the UK singles chart in 1994. She also starred in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.
She continued to find moderate success with a number of television projects, including The Return of the Native (1994) based on the novel of the same name and the mini-series Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and John Cleese.
Source : Wikipedia
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