Playing In Traffic

After the insanely extravagant circus of her multi-million dollar wedding to Michael Douglas last autumn - and her subsequent assured place at the table of Hollywood royalty - perhaps the most astonishing thing about the phenomenon that is Catherine Zeta-Jones is the mileage of goodwill expressed towards her by the media in general.

Granted, there is one upcoming court case involving unsanctioned wedding photos appearing in Hello! magazine - but for a woman who's filled more inches in America's supermarket tabloids over the last year than Whitney, Britney and Madonna put together, the bulk of the coverage of the new Princess of Wales has been remarkably complimentary.
Even outside of the shiny, happy coverage provided by such sycophantic rags as Hello! and OK!, catty snipe-pieces of the "No-one will ever know what first attracted shameless gold-digger Catherine to movie-mogul multi-millionaire Douglas" variety have been conspicuous by their complete absence. It may be a honeymoon, or maybe not - but Zeta-Jones, whether or not she has hopscotched her way onto the Hollywood A-list, is there to stay. Her next project, American Sweethearts, sees her starring opposite John Cusack and Julia Roberts, and will net her a $7million cheque - and on the evidence of her display in the Oscar-nominated Traffic, this owes as much to acting ability as name recognition.
It could be that the media's benevolence can be accounted for by the startlingly honest and unguarded nature of her remarks regarding her ambition - and, indeed, her new husband. She admits she had her sights trained on Douglas as far back as his youthful days on the telly-series The Streets Of San Francisco (as a teenager, she allegedly tried on a wedding-dress in her local boutique, then turned to her mates and announced "I'm going to marry Michael Douglas").
Catherine first came to prominence in the dreary and utterly forgettable ITV Sunday-evening fare, The Darling Buds Of May.
The apparent lack of good film opportunities (at one stage she was reduced to opening supermarkets in order to pay the rent), coupled with what she felt to be unwelcome attention from the ever-vigilant British tabloids (not exactly helped by high-profile relationships with Blue Peter's John Leslie and Simply Red's Mick Hucknall); followed by disastrous forays into the terminally underfunded and underachieving British film industry (Blue Juice, anyone?) - all these factors drove a disenchanted Catherine Zeta-Jones to head west in 1995, determined to take a shot at Hollywood.
Upon her arrival in the movie mecca, life wasn't instantly peachy. "I look back now and it was really miserable, driving around LA morning, noon and night in my little rented car. But I had to do it. I've always had a lot of drive, that's what drove me away from Britain to come to the States and try something else. Because I'm here for the long run. I've always said that, even when things weren't going well in Britain, I wanted longevity. I want to be doing Hello Dolly when I'm 65. And it all paid off.'
The first pay-off came with the 1996 TV mini-series Titanic. Catherine felt sore that it was hardly as prominent a role as that landed by Kate Winslet in James Cameron's movie version, but it was stumbled upon by one Steven Spielberg on a late-night channel-surfing marathon, causing the director to offer Zeta-Jones a part opposite Antonio Bandeiras in The Mask Of Zorro, which Spielberg's production company was then putting together. More auspiciously still, it was on a
subsequent promo tour for Zorro that Catherine met fellow thespian Michael Douglas, also on
the promotional trail for A Perfect Murder. The rest is glossy-mag history, with the result that
at 32 years of age, Catherine has settled into domesticity with Douglas and their baby son Dylan.
Ironically, it was this Hollywood-fairytale set-up which almost scuppered her chances of landing her only serious role to date - in Traffic, for which she eventually received a deserved Golden Globe nomination. While perusing the script, she discovered that she was pregnant, and realised that this could cost her the part she was desperate to play. "I was in Aspen at the time, and I had to ring Steven up and tell him the news. I had to swear him to secrecy because it wasn't public knowledge at this point. He was a bit thrown, it was like 'oh, congratulations...' and then I said to him that I still wanted to do it, and that being pregnant would actually help the character. I think it gives her more motivation, she has one child and another on the way and we know that she has come from a very poor background and will do anything to protect her lifestyle, her family. I said to Steven that I understood if he didn't want me to do it, and if that was the case we could just say that I passed on it and he could find somebody else. He was like 'OK, I'm going to have to share this information with my producer, it won't go anywhere else, but I'll have to get back to you...' and then he called me in January and said 'Yeah, I think we can use this' and I was like 'That's what I wanted to hear! I was thrilled!"
The result is a revelation and easily CZJ's most accomplished performance to date: she stars as a wealthy trophy-wife who discovers that her husband is a drug-lord, and is forced into desperate measures when said hubby is arrested, in order to protect her family and affluent lifestyle. Though she was unjustly pipped to the Golden Globe by Kate Hudson's turn in Almost Famous, and completely overlooked by the Oscar committee for Supporting Actress, Zeta-Douglas can take solace from the fact that Traffic is a superior entry on a CV which hitherto had not been exactly sparkling (action-adventure fodder such as The Haunting and Entrapment, the latter featuring more of her arse than her face).
Catherine seems very glad of the change. "I hope ultimately that it does change the perception of me. That's why it was so important that Steven didn't say 'no' and the insurance companies then, might have said that they wouldn't insure me. I get so many scripts which are very similar to what I've been successful doing. And I can understand that. If I was running a studio and I had an action thriller which needed a femme fatale who can do that kind of stuff, then I'd go for the girl who made the other companies money. It's funny because I got stuck being known for action adventure and looking beautiful and glamorous and all of that. And when Traffic came along I wanted to do it because I just thought 'well I just hope it puts me on another road and it takes me somewhere else. It's so hard sometimes to convince directors that you can strip away a lot and come up with the goods."
Also starring in Traffic is Catherine's significant other half, as a newly appointed drugs czar (drugs Führer?) who discovers that said drugs are a lot closer to home than he could have possibly imagined. However, if you arrive at the cinema expecting sexual chemistry between the newlyweds, you're in for a disappointment, since they never actually appear on screen together - a situation Catherine found rather odd.
"It was quite funny. I think there was only one day when we were both on the same location. It was like 'Oh, whose trailer is that?' So we shared his trailer for the day. It was quite strange really. But isn't he great in it? He's just so brilliant. I love watching him in this, and the rest of the cast too. Aren't they so cool?"
She may gush about her new husband and baby Dylan but Zeta-Douglas is already making her mark as a businesswoman. Taking advice from father-in-law and Hollywood veteran Kirk, she has formed her own production company Milkwood Pictures with her younger brother Michael. Taking the lead from Traffic (which was based on Simon Moore's magnificent 1980s Channel 4 miniseries Traffik) Catherine's first film project will be based on the British telly show Trust.
And although reports from the set of American Sweethearts hint at much hostile fur-flying between herself and renowned über-diva Julia Roberts, the latter's infamous on-set bitchiness is unlikely to stand a cat's chance in hell against the formidable Mrs. Zeta-Douglas. A living tribute to the value of ambition and persistence, her time is now.

Traffic is released nationwide in April