From Chorus Girl to Chicago

Catherine Zeta-Jones chats about her on-screen role as a murderous flapper in the high-profile movie musical.
By J. Sperling Reich

In less than 10 years Catherine Zeta-Jones has gone from near obscurity to modern-day Hollywood royalty as both a movie star and Tinseltown scion Michael Douglas' wife. With a showy role in the musical Chicago, which has already garnered her a Golden Globe nomination, the actress seems poised to burst into supernova status.

The Swansea, Wales, native got her first big show business break at the age of 15 when she was the leading lady's understudy in a British revival of 42nd Street. On a night when the show's producer happened to be in the audience, the star fell ill, leaving Zeta-Jones to fill her tap shoes. It's a story that could have been scripted by Hollywood: The producer liked what he saw and young Catherine took over the role permanently.

Zeta-Jones soon moved on to television work, with roles in the series The Darling Buds of May and the miniseries Catherine the Great. The movies also beckoned, and the young actress made the most of the opportunity with appearances in films like Christopher Columbus: The Discovery and Blue Juice. Then in 1998, she starred opposite Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro and broke through internationally. She quickly followed that up with high-profile parts in Entrapment, Traffic, and America's Sweethearts. Now, playing the hard-bitten chorine Velma Kelly in Chicago opposite Renée Zellweger and Richard Gere, Zeta-Jones has an opportunity to display the musical skills that first brought her acclaim on the English stage.

In addition to her professional obligations, Zeta-Jones has a small son at home and she's expecting another child next spring. But with the buzz surrounding Chicago, the striking actress recently took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with reporters.

Question: Richard Gere was saying how this movie felt different in that you were like a troupe, different than in other movies where you are just acting.

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Yeah. I think the rehearsal period set us up with a kind of camaraderie that we were in this together. That doesn't always necessarily … you don't get to know people, usually it is like, "My name is Catherine, nice to meet you," and then the next minute you are in a scene and sometimes it is a really intimate scene. And we had the chance to really bash it out and all get beat up together while we were rehearsing and go from dancing to voice lessons to this lesson to scene work. And so it was like a boot camp for us for six weeks and then we had to jump into our costumes and do it for real, and it was strange.

Q: You were the only cast actually making a movie musical in Hollywood at the time. That must have been special.

C Z-J: It was really special, the whole thing was. I remember so many moments, one of pain from going at it gung ho and then not being able to walk the next day. Just amazing moments of — the characters are show people, dancers from New York — it is just a wonderful kind of family, a kind of togetherness that doesn't happen, it hasn't happened to me in a film.

Q: How badly did you want this role?

C Z-J: I wanted it really bad. When it was first talked about by Marty Richards to me years before I even met Rob Marshall and then before I met Rob Marshall, Harvey Weinstein had spoken to me about it. And I had heard the same as everybody else that they had been trying to get a movie version of Chicago made for years and years and years and everyone was attached to it. Then Marty Richards said, "I am still trying to get you Chicago," I said "I am in, you have got to come knocking on my door just for me to give it a go," and then I didn't hear anything. And then I spoke to Rob Marshall and it seemed like it was on. They had found somebody in Rob who could visualize how to put this from on the stage onto the screen and I didn't have to think twice when he asked me if I wanted to do it. He saw me perform on a TV show in Britain once, I was dancing and singing years ago, he had a video tape of that. I don't know where he got it but he did. And he asked me to be in it and I said 'yes' and I wanted to play Velma.

Q: Tell us about Velma. Is she a villain or is she misunderstood?

C Z-J: Well I think just casting-wise, I just saw myself as Velma. And I knew the score of the show before I even knew what it was about. I knew "All That Jazz," I knew "Razzle Dazzle," and I just had to sing "All That Jazz." She is a "been there, done that" kind of woman after she does her husband and her sister. Her celebrity and stardom is heightened even more in prison and she thinks it is never going to go away until the tide starts to turn. And in comes the rise and then the fall of Velma Kelly and then the survival instinct to fight. To grab on — even with Roxie whom she hated ever since she laid eyes on her — just to make it work, to be up there on top. The fight to stay there, that is just the kind of woman she is — whatever it takes to be on top.

Q: You studied as a dancer, isn't that right?

C Z-J: Years ago, yes.

Q: You were in 42nd Street, though.

C Z-J: I was in the chorus; I was a hoofer, a tap dancer. I didn't go to any professional school; I went to the church hall around the corner, that is how I learned to dance. The Hazel Johnson school of dancing. But yeah, I tap danced in 42nd Street, that was two years of my life.

Q: Can you talk about working with Renée Zellweger?

C Z-J: It was terrific. She is just a great gal. We had a lot of fun together. She was terrified and kept saying, "You have done this before," and I said, "Yeah, I was 17 years old. Whose bright idea was it to do it right after I had a baby?" And she was so wanting to learn and to get it right and we spent a lot of time together screwing up and redoing it. And in the rehearsal room and then on film we were all dressed up and ready to go. And it was just a really great work process and she is just a very generous person. We had a lot of fun — six months of our lives together.

Q: So it was two months of rehearsing?

C Z-J: Six weeks, I think. We had to rehearse it like a show, doing it from beginning to end. We rehearsed everything, scene work.

Q: Do you almost feel like you could have taken this on stage?

C Z-J: Yeah at the end of it, as we wrapped the movie, yeah I think we could have taken it on stage, like around the country.

Q: What was your fitness regimen like during the movie?

C Z-J: Well I worked really hard before and during rehearsals. Some days I could hardly walk. I just wanted to try to keep up with the girls who do this eight shows a week, every night of their lives, and they were so supportive to me. I was never going to get up to that standard but I wanted to give it my best shot so I was doing a lot of stretching just to be supple again and a lot of cardio just to keep up my stamina. It is not like doing it in theatre where you go do the show, you get the applause and it gives you the drive to go on and then you do the end of the show, you take a bow, and then you go to bed. We were doing dance numbers for three days at every possible angle and direction and the stamina to keep that up, you know you do it three times and it is like, I can hardly breathe. So that was the hardest thing for me, pacing myself and in the back of your mind you know that you can't go back tomorrow with a different audience and do a different take on it or play it differently or dance it stronger or better, this is there on film forever. It is the classic thing that every actor has when you are going home in the car, we do every scene and go, "Why didn't I think of that? That is the way the scene should have worked," but by that time it was too late.

Q: How long after your son Dylan's arrival did you start working?

C Z-J: He was like one.

Q: Are you going to have a baby before and after every musical you do?

C Z-J: I know, everyone is waiting for me to do a movie like Traffic where I am pregnant and I am like "I can't find one, I would." Search it out, research it for me, if there is a pregnant woman to be cast out there, it is for me.

Q: What is the scariest part about having a baby?

C Z-J: The scariest part for me, I had a very easy pregnancy with my first child and I was so lucky that everything was healthy and fine — he was perfect — but the hardest thing for me is the nine months of anticipation — especially if you are Dame Doom which I am sometimes. I think of the worst case scenario of anything. Dame Doom is what my husband calls me. Just "Oh, what is that twinge? Oh, I have to call the doctor." When that baby comes out and it is healthy and it has every digit that it is supposed to have, it is like, "Ahh, you made it." That for me is the scariest thing. I just want to know what is going on in there.

Q: Do you know what you are having?

C Z-J: No.

Q: Do you want to know?

C Z-J: No, I think it is exactly the same pregnancy as my first one so I think it might be a boy again but I don't know. Who knows. This morning it was doing summersaults, like on a roller coaster, but as long as it is healthy.

Q: When are you due?

C Z-J: I am due in April. I am counting the days, hoping it is going to go quick.

Q: Does having a family make it harder to keep working?

C Z-J: It is just a different world. A world that I would never change. I sometimes think to myself, what the hell did I used to do with my time before I had my son? What did I do? I guess I used to work but what about all the other hours of the day that I used to ... I have no idea what I used to do. It is just thrilling to go home at night from work and have that family unit there.

Q: How do you balance being home and being at work?

C Z-J: It is knowing that you can't be Wonder Woman. You can't do it all and, "Oh my gosh, the first time he had a pee-pee on the potty I wasn't there." The kid knows that I am his mother and I wasn't there when he had his big day. We are now trying to get him into a big boy bed, and I have to get up very early so I am not you know, like it was when I would be working. I would be there in the middle of the night trying to put him into the big boy bed but I have to sometimes pass the buck and I think that me and Michael try to balance it so that if I am working, he can be with me or if he is working, I can be with him. And so far it is working out pretty good but you can't do everything. It is a different life, it is a different world. Organizing who is going to turn up at the birthday party, it is like, "Barney or JJ?"; it is like things you never thought of before.

Q: What are you working on now?

C Z-J: I am working on developing a child, that is it.

Q: But you are wrapping Intolerable Cruelty.

C Z-J: Yeah that was my last gig.

Q: Do you know what is next?

C Z-J: I have no idea what I am going to do next. There are some scripts that I am reading; there are two scripts that I am developing, one is by Terry George who wrote In the Name of the Father called Trust. I am co-producing with Warner Brothers. I am co-producing a movie with Sony called Flint. So I have, whilst I am not physically doing movies right now, I have all of that and I have some business ventures at T-Mobile and Arden that I do, so that takes up time. And I have an Internet company that I am developing with somebody. So all of that stuff goes on while I am not physically working and I hope to get some really good material coming up. It has been hard out there on the material level, I think it has been; the writers are just doing sequels or comic-book characters. It has been really a dry point so I am hoping whilst I am having this baby there are a lot of things that are going to be written so once I am back to my old fighting weight and good to go there is going to be an influx of good material.

Q: Is there a project that you and your husband want to work on?

C Z-J: Yeah, we have one. We have had a few along the way but it is hard to make a nice balance when you are a couple in real life. It can take away that — personally I think — any sense of love story. It is kind of voyeuristic to me; it is like looking at people through a keyhole so to find the right thing is hard. I think if we were in combat together or at least attracted to each other but we had some kind of Bogey-Hepburn thing going on, that is fun to watch but otherwise we just don't get it, we wouldn't want that. So we have one thing that we are trying to work out and maybe that would be my first thing out of the gate after the baby if we can get it together.

Q: Are you doing a cameo in the movie Michael and his father Kirk are starring in?

C Z-J: No, I was the only Douglas not allowed to be in the movie. But that is ok.

Q: Can you give us a sense of Intolerable Cruelty?

C Z-J: It was a fun. It was a great experience — me, George [Clooney] and the Coen brothers — it is like movie making made easy. They are just so easy and relaxed, and Miss Worry over here is like, "Are you sure you got it?" "Yeah, I think it is great." And I am like, "What do you mean I am wrapping? It is two o'clock in the afternoon for God's sake! What am I going to do for the next four hours?" And "What accent do you want?" "Well I think you sound great like that." "What do you mean, Welsh, English, American, a mix like no one knows where I am from?" "Perfect." So it was a great experience and the film is fun, it is a lot of fun. George plays the hottest, worst-in-some-people's-eyes-and-best-in-others divorce lawyer. And I meet him whilst I am divorcing my second husband and we are very similar even though I am the divorcee and the gold digger and he is the lawyer trying to get at me and we come together. And there is a little bit of movie magic there.

Q: What's the story in Intolerable Cruelty? What do you play?

C Z-J: I play this divorcee who goes to seek out — goes with her lawyer to find out — what the settlement is going to be and just hoping it is going to be a big settlement. And she meets George Clooney who is the best divorce lawyer in town but I can't give too much away because it is going to give the movie away but she is a fun character, she is kind of the eye of the storm. She just swarms through life without realizing how much chaos she creates in her wake.