Catherine Zeta-Jones has never lacked for star power. At nine, she appeared in a West End production of Annie; at 10, she won a talent competition with a Shirley Bassey song; and by 11, she was a tap-dancing champion.
“That’s all I ever wanted: to be onstage,” Zeta-Jones told The New York Times in 2009. (At the time, she was shortly to appear as Desirée Armfeldt in the first Broadway revival of A Little Night Music.) As a teenager in London, she went on, “I would queue up for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. It might take me two tries, but I always got the job.”
Those early breakthroughs would eventually give way to a glittering career on stage and screen, spanning fizzy romantic comedies, thrilling blockbusters, and a truly staggering turn in Rob Marshall’s Chicago—affirming Zeta-Jones’s status as one of modern Hollywood’s vanishingly rare triple threats. (She is also—and this cannot be overstated—a delight on Instagram.)
Now, as the Wednesday star, mother of two, and longtime partner of fellow actor Michael Douglas celebrates her birthday, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit some dazzling vintage snapshots of the wildly talented, jaw-droppingly gorgeous Catherine Zeta-Jones. So rouge your knees, roll your stockings down, and enjoy.
- Photo: Getty Images1/19
1987
Catherine Zeta-Jones at 17, in a jaunty promotional portrait for 42nd Street in London.
- Photo: Getty Images2/19
1987
Playing Peggy Sawyer (opposite Jill Gascoine’s Dorothy Brock) in 42nd Street at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
- Photo: Getty Images3/19
1991
At the Royal Albert Dock in Liverpool, sporting big, bouncy, Kate Bush-esque curls.
- Photo: Getty Images4/19
1992
Giving capital-D drama in her music video for “For All Time,” from the 1992 concept album Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of Spartacus.
- Photo: Getty Images5/19
1992
Hand-in-hand with the television presenter John Leslie at a screening of Batman Returns.
- Photo: Getty Images6/19
1994
On the Exmoor set of The Return of the Native, a made-for-TV Tom Hardy adaptation. Zeta-Jones played Eustacia Vye.
- Photo: Getty Images7/19
1995
Looking leggy and glamorous beside Angus Macfadyen at the 1995 BAFTAs.
- Photo: Getty Images8/19
1997
A vision in strappy, satiny red at the premiere of Men in Black.
- Photo: Getty Images9/19
1999
Pretty in pink Ungaro at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards. Twenty-five years later, Zeta-Jones’s daughter Carys would wear the same dress to celebrate her 21st birthday.
- Photo: Getty Images10/19
1999
Talk about the body electric! Zeta-Jones in figure-hugging neon yellow at the Los Angeles premiere of The Muse. She’d met her date, Michael Douglas, the year prior, in Deauville, and would marry him in 2000.
Photo: Everett Collection11/191999
In a promotional image for Jon Amiel’s heist film Entrapment, co-starring an elder Sean Connery.
- Photo: Getty Images12/19
1999
Playing in a pro-am golf tournament in St. Andrews, Scotland.
- Photo: Getty Images13/19
1999
Recording Michael Douglas as he plays in the same pro-am tournament in St. Andrews. Couples who golf together…etc!
- Photo: Getty Images14/19
2000
Playing her second shot on the 18th hole on the Old Course in St. Andrews.
Photo: Everett Collection15/192001
With Julia Roberts in Joe Roth’s starry 2001 rom-com America’s Sweethearts.
Photo: Everett Collection16/192002
For her work as Velma Kelly in Chicago, Zeta-Jones would win the Academy Award for best supporting actress at the 2003 Oscars.
Photo: Everett Collection17/192003
With George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty.
- Photo: Everett Collection18/19
2004
In dark glasses and bangs on the set of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve.
Photo: Everett Collection19/192005
With Antonio Banderas in The Legend of Zorro.
