Catherine Zeta-Jones Talks Going Indie in Hollywood: “I Don’t Have to Prove Anything to Anybody”

Catherine Zeta-Jones talked about the welcome impact of winning an Oscar for best supporting actress in 2003 for Chicago on Friday while during an informal conversation at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

“It’s actually the beginning, because there’s the precedent, with your name being preceded with the Academy Award winning Catherine Zeta-Jones,” she told the festival. Zeta Jones was also pulled in two directions in having to choose between winning an Oscar and a best actress Tony, and which was more satisfying.

“To be acknowledged by the Broadway lights, that was wonderful. But the Academy Award was something that was totally unexpected. It blew my mind,” she insisted. But now aged 55, Zeta-Jones talked about stepping back and into an indie film world, well away from the commercial demands of a Hollywood she mastered as a film and TV star.

“I can’t talk about it right now, but I am doing a little indie picture and I’m really excited about that, because I’ve never been part of that indie world,” she revealed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Zeta-Jones added: “I want to turn up. I want to do some interesting work. It goes back to my theater thinking, because I don’t feel I have to prove anything to anybody. I don’t have to work hard for other people.”

With an eye on her early career, Zeta-Jones talked about her early dance and singing background in Wales serving her well in Hollywood. A child star, Zeta Jones won a national talent contest at age 10 years, and then began her career in London stage productions.

“If you know where I came from, it’s the end of a train line in Wales,” she recalled of tap dancing first as a four year-old. That led to early stage production roles in London’s West End.

“I started very young too in the theater. I’m certainly not a young chick. I’ve been in the industry for a very long time and I’ve loved every minute of it,” she recalled. That said, Zeta Jones talked about early rejection as she got into auditions in London to get on the stage.

“For me, it was like winning the race,” she said of getting beyond auditions to stage roles and being able to work alongside theater veterans. She got a breakout lead role in the hit musical 42nd Street at age 17 after serving as the second understudy to the show’s star.

“My dream had kind of being completed,” Zeta Jones said of getting a lead role in a theater production as she knew little about the separate film and TV worlds, especially in far-off Hollywood. But going beyond being seen as more than a singer and dancer, and being considered for acting roles, was a hurdle. “I went to many auditions, and I was rejected,” she recalled.

But in 1991, Zeta Jones succeeded in snagging a role in the comedy The Darling Buds of May, which brought her instant fame in the UK. “It was a learning curve, for sure,” she said of starring in a popular TV show.

“After an hour of that show screening, my life changed. I was totally recognized and I’d never had that before,” Zeta Jones said of fame striking when she was just 21 years old and after having worked through much of her childhood.

But having to go through the brutal tabloid mill in the UK and its scrutiny prepared her for Hollywood around the corner. She shot a movie, The Phantom, for two days in Los Angeles, but also had a six months visa for the U.S. to pursue her dream of making it in Hollywood.  

“I went to America and I thought this is my chance, to give it my best shot,” she recounted. Zeta Jones got a role in a CBS TV movie set around the sinking of the Titanic. Luckily, Steven Spielberg saw the project on TV and was impressed by Zeta Jones.

Within two days of the first screening of the show, Spielberg rang her agent to ask about casting her in The Mask of Zorro, where she starred opposite Antonio Banderas and fellow Wales native Anthony Hopkins.

“Lesson to actors. If you don’t think you’re doing the role you should be getting, just do it, because you never know Steven Spielberg is watching,” Zeta Jones told the Red Sea audience. She added early training in singing and dancing helped her rise the ladder in Hollywood, including doing stunts and other physicality on camera.

Zeta Jones also pointed to her role alongside Sean Connery in Entrapment. “In real life, he was like a life coach for me. I was a young woman in a very male dominated world. He was my protector,” she recalled.

Zeta Jones’s dance background served her well to help win a best supporting actress Oscar in 2002 for her role in the movie musical Chicago.

“The whole process of the rehearsals, when you think of the screen, all the different angles we had to do for those routines, that collaboration with dancers who felt I speak their language, it was wonderful,” Zeta Jones said of the collaboration behind the movie musical.