A bingo jackpot paid for Catherine Zeta-Jones's first dance lessons
Her Swansea family's £100,000 bingo win funded the dance classes of a hyperactive girl. At seventeen she was the second understudy in 42nd Street until both women ahead of her were unavailable one night. The producer kept her in the lead for two years, and the road ran on to an Oscar.
Catherine Zeta-Jones was born on 25 September 1969 in Swansea, the daughter of a sweet-factory owner and a seamstress. Her unusual middle name honours a grandmother, who was herself named after a ship a great-grandfather had sailed on. Her mother enrolled her in dance school at four to burn off energy, and the bingo money moved the family to the Mumbles and paid for ballet.
At nine she was cast as one of the orphans in the original West End Annie, and while still a young teenager she won a national title for tap dancing. She left school at fifteen without O-levels, moved to London and, by her own account, would queue for an audition, change leotards and audition again. The 42nd Street break in 1987 made her Peggy Sawyer, the chorus girl who becomes a star, a role that mirrored her own luck.
Television fame arrived with ITV's The Darling Buds of May from 1991 to 1993, then the country's highest-rated show; she said one hour on screen meant she could no longer go anywhere unrecognised. British films then kept casting her as decoration, so she moved to Los Angeles, hoping anonymity would let her win parts on merit. A CBS miniseries about the Titanic caught Steven Spielberg's eye, and he recommended her to Martin Campbell for The Mask of Zorro. She learned riding, sword-fighting and Spanish diction, and the 1998 film took more than $250 million worldwide.
The acclaim she wanted came with Traffic in 2000 and the musical Chicago in 2002, in which her Velma Kelly won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Later she returned to the stage and won a Tony for A Little Night Music in 2009, and more recently played Morticia Addams in Wednesday. She was made a CBE in 2010 for film and humanitarian work, and she has spoken publicly about living with bipolar II disorder.
Source: Catherine Zeta-Jones
