Catherine Zeta-Jones brings conviction to supporting parts that do not always deserve the trouble. We rate her most highly in Traffic, where Steven Soderbergh gives her more to do than look assured.
Fi1m perspective
In Traffic (2000), Catherine Zeta-Jones starts with the simple business of ordering lunch. Her Helena Ayala changes within the first act, and she lets us notice without advertising how much work she is doing. We found the change unsettling because she makes it seem so ordinary. Steven Soderbergh gives her something substantial to play within a busy ensemble thriller, and she does not need to insist on our attention.
The Hollywood breakthrough was Elena Montero in the action-adventure The Mask of Zorro (1998), which made physical assurance an obvious selling point. Her musical theatre experience found a direct use in Chicago (2002), with singing and dancing central to Velma Kelly. The less useful habit in that early Hollywood period was casting for beauty first, as in Entrapment (1999) and The Haunting (1999).
Ocean's Twelve (2004) is more frustrating: she is doing the work in a film that has largely decided to enjoy the company. As Europol detective Isabel Lahiri, opposite Brad Pitt's Rusty Ryan, she makes their exchanges feel as though something matters. We keep wanting the film to stay with them. Soderbergh keeps cutting away. The loose plotting hurts the film, but her refusal to coast is one reason we stay interested in a sequel whose story has become an afterthought.
In Side Effects (2013), costume designer Susan Lyall puts Dr Victoria Siebert in black, with pulled-back hair and glasses removed to make a point. Zeta-Jones uses that formality to keep the part credible even when the script becomes less so. The film is a good thriller with a disappointing change of priorities, and she has less to do than her billing promises. Her seriousness is useful here, but we would have liked the part to give her more to work with. Start with Traffic; approach Ocean's Twelve prepared to wish the film would get back to her and Pitt.
Biography
Catherine Zeta-Jones is a Welsh actress. She was born Catherine Zeta Jones on 25 September 1969 in Swansea, Wales, and began performing on stage as a child. She moved to London at 15 and secured early roles in West End musicals, including a lead in a revival of 42nd Street. She gained prominence in Britain through the television series The Darling Buds of May in the early 1990s before transitioning to film.
Her Hollywood breakthrough came with The Mask of Zorro (1998) and Entrapment (1999). She received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Velma Kelly in Chicago (2002), along with a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Other notable film roles include Helena Ayala in Traffic (2000), Isabel Lahiri in Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Dr. Victoria Siebert in Side Effects (2013). She has also appeared in the television series Wednesday (2022) as Morticia Addams. In 2010 she won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for A Little Night Music. She was appointed CBE in 2010 for services to film and humanitarian work. She has been married to actor Michael Douglas since 2000.
