I’ve had a fairytale life and won Oscar…but there’s a role I’m gutted to have missed out on, says Catherine Zeta-Jones
SHE won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and will always be remembered for playing Mariette in classic Nineties TV series The Darling Buds Of May.
But Catherine Zeta-Jones says the biggest acting break she has always craved has proved elusive — playing James Bond.
And if that sounds an unlikely role, she has revealed that former 007 Sean Connery backed her to replace him as the all-action spy.
Talking about her ambition for the first time, she said: “I would have loved to have played Bond.
“I had such a wonderful relationship with Sean Connery — we did a movie called Entrapment years ago — and he was like my elder brother, my dad, my support.
I really loved him.
“I am a Bond fanatic and he said to me once, ‘You would have made a great Bond, girl’. I asked, ‘A Bond girl or Bond?’
“He went, ‘Bond — girl’. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I would have loved to have played Bond!’ But I think that time has passed.”
Mum-of-two Catherine, 53, has now returned in another classic role, playing Morticia in the new Netflix TV series Wednesday, a reboot of the Addams Family franchise.
The series focuses on the teenage issues of Wednesday, Morticia’s only child.
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It also follows up on the Sixties US sitcom shown on repeat in the UK right up until the Eighties.
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The Netflix version, shot by Beetlejuice director Tim Burton, is part horror story and part high-school drama.
Catherine said she jumped at the chance to join the new cast, which includes Jenna Ortega as Wednesday.
She said: “It was a real treat because it’s an iconic show and characters like Fester and Morticia are indelible, they’re in our subconscious.
“It’s more than pop culture, really. My niece knows The Addams Family and my grandmother, God bless her, she loved The Addams Family.
"You throw in the brilliant mind of Tim Burton and a fantastic casting and I’m just thrilled it’s going so well.”
The role is a reminder that Swansea-born Catherine is back to working as a jobbing actress following two long career sabbaticals, caused in part by her battle with bipolar disorder and the failing health of her 78-year-old husband, actor Michael Douglas.
She was admitted to rehabilitation hospital in 2011 and treated for bipolar disorder II.
Catherine told InStyle magazine that it had helped strengthen her marriage and helped her gain a new appreciation for life.
She said: “I hope I can help remove any stigma attached to it, and that those who don’t have it under control will seek help with all that is available to treat it.
“You find out who you really are and who you are married to. You find things inside yourself you never imagined were there.”
After winning an Oscar in 2003 for her role in the musical Chicago, Catherine starred in Intolerable Cruelty, alongside George Clooney, then the following year she made The Terminal, with Tom Hanks, and Ocean’s Twelve, with Brad Pitt.
Then in 2010 her world was turned upside down when Basic Instinct actor Michael was diagnosed with tongue cancer, and there were times when the strain became too much.
Catherine was treated for depression in hospital in 2011 and again in 2013.
The same year the couple separated for a time, although they now seem stronger than ever, and Michael has made a full recovery.
Catherine, mum to Carys, 19, and Dylan, 22, said: “The family is doing great. Well, actually Michael has been in France for what seems like a lifetime, shooting a really great project, so the kids and I surprised him for Thanksgiving.
“He had no idea. Carys flew from the East Coast and we got into the hotel under the cover of night. He came home from work and we were there. I thought he was going to have a heart attack for one minute. It was one of those great, great moments.”
Catherine’s Hollywood adventure has come against all the odds.
Her dad David owned a sweet factory in Wales while her mother Patricia was a seamstress, but a £100,000 bingo win paid for dance and acting lessons when she was a little girl.
Catherine won a minor role in the West End version of Annie and later played Tallulah in Bugsy Malone, also in the theatre.
At 15 she quit school to move to London, and when she was 21 she made her film debut in little-known French-Italian movie 1001 Nights.
Then in 1991, TV’s The Darling Buds Of May, in which she played Pop Larkin’s eldest daughter, made her a household name overnight.
Catherine dated a string of celebrities, including TV presenter John Leslie before he was shamed in a sex tape scandal.
She was linked with singers David Essex and Mick Hucknall and was briefly engaged to Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen.
But she tired of hitting the headlines and in her mid-twenties decided to start a new life in Los Angeles.
She said: “It sounds like a fairytale story now, but I must say, like all actors, it was a very vulnerable time.
“It was a big move. I was scared. In the back of my mind, I was like, ‘Do I go back home to Wales and to London with my tail between my legs’, like, ‘didn’t really work out for me there? Remember me?’
“I didn’t want to do that. But I never wanted to be an old grand dame actress going, ‘If only I’d gone to Hollywood I would have been a star, darling’. You’ve got to be in it to win it.”
Catherine met her future husband Michael, who is 25 years her senior, at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in August 1998.
They got engaged in 1999 and married the next year.
The ceremony, which cost an estimated £1.5million, was labelled the “wedding of the year”.
On going on to become a mum, Catherine said: “I lucked out because I have two great, well-rounded, good citizens of the planet, kids.
“It happens that as they’ve got older they like to hang with us, so it’s just a joy. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, I’m totally blessed.”
And Catherine said she is feeling happier and more confident than ever, now she is in her fifties. She said: “At this point in my career, everything else is a bonus.
“You reach milestones in your life, and not just professionally, but milestones like when you were a little girl you dream about those things.
“Then you go, ‘Wow, if it all ended tomorrow, I’ve had such a great time so everything else is a bonus’.”
She added: “Something about getting older was that I don’t take a lot of s**t from people. I just don’t take it, and I don’t take it in a very gracious way.
“And it’s only something that comes from experience and it’s only something that comes from being 53.
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“There’s a confidence I’ve sometimes had to put on when I walk down a red carpet. I have my insecurities, like every other woman.
“But as I’ve got older, I’ve got much more confident about the way I look.”