Rise to Fame
Catherine Zeta-Jones got to Hollywood the old way: by proving she could do something harder first. She was singing and dancing in West End productions as a child in Swansea, Wales, and built a full career in British television before American studios gave her a look. The Mask of Zorro (1998) broke through in the U.S. market. Chicago (2002) made it permanent: her Velma Kelly won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, which she has said blew her mind. She came in as a dancer, stayed as a movie star.
In the Spotlight
Twenty years after Chicago, she found a second act on Netflix as Morticia Addams in Wednesday, one of the platform's most-watched debuts. She reprised the role in season 2. For Prime Video, she's playing a former cocaine dealer hunted by the world's most dangerous hitmen in a new action thriller. The marriage to Michael Douglas (25 years her senior) has outlasted every prediction, and she's noted the skeptics with some satisfaction.
Side Notes
She and Michael Douglas share the same birthday, September 25, with exactly 25 years between them. That symmetry gets more attention than it deserves, but what doesn't get enough is that she went public with a bipolar II disorder diagnosis in 2011 at a moment she had no obligation to. Michael Douglas's throat cancer was the trigger. She's cited a 'British stiff-upper-lip mentality' as why she never wanted to be public about it. The disclosure ended up doing more for that conversation than most deliberate campaigns.