More Than Face Value

Can we be honest here? It’s hard to find anyone in Hollywood these days who doesn’t have a crush on Catherine Zeta-Jones.

After swashbuckling her way into Antonio Banderas’ heart in last summer’s hit “The Mask of Zorro,” the 29-year-old Welsh actress is capping off a spectacular calendar year with the high-style heist caper “Entrapment,” which opens today, and director Jan de Bont’s summer horror spectacular “The Haunting.”

Her directors and leading men--including international sex symbols Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, “The Haunting’s” Liam Neeson, and Banderas--swoon like sophomores when talking about her.

“One of the most beautiful women I have ever had the pleasure of working with,” Connery, her producer and co-star on “Entrapment,” faxes from Scotland.

“The moment I saw her in ‘Zorro,’ I wanted to make a movie with her,” De Bont says with a giggle during a break in post-production for “Haunting,” which opens in July. “A lot of actresses are talented, but what’s unique about her is: Whatever you do with the camera, it can’t help loving her.”

Hopkins, her co-star on “Zorro,” gushes: “She’s beautiful, passionate, has tremendous sex appeal and, most importantly, hasn’t lost her Welsh accent.”

Zeta-Jones is building an industry rep for “professionalism” and, yes, that undeniable sex appeal that’s one part girl next door, one part girl your mother warned you about. The self-described “star-struck girl from Wales” who was British tap-dancing champ at 13, is one minute pouting over her genuine disappointment that she couldn’t make it to all the Oscar parties. The next, she assumes a woman’s command of the moment and a natural star’s ability to transform a hotel suite interview and photo session with a lusty, knowing laugh that makes it all seem like a stolen te^te-a-te^te.

Yet most American moviegoers haven’t the slightest idea where she came from or who she really is. And Zeta-Jones couldn’t be happier about it.

In “Entrapment,” Zeta-Jones co-stars as an American insurance investigator who keeps the audience and master thief Connery guessing through plot twists and double crosses, while stopping time with an erotic ballet through a grid of laser beams. It’s one of those indelible screen moments, like Rita Hayworth discarding a glove in “Gilda” or Michelle Pfeiffer crooning “Makin’ Whoopie” atop a baby grand in “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” in which an actress announces herself with the sensual insouciance of a star.

On screen, she exudes both exotic glamour and a healthy athleticism. In person, she trumps herself, proving a natural beauty with the kind of earthy, playful humor that turns wherever she is into a party.

“She’s got that X-factor,” Hopkins says before leaving Los Angeles for the “Mission: Impossible 2” set in Australia. “Lauren Bacall had it. Audrey Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, they all had that great style and poise. And Catherine’s got it.”

Zeta-Jones smiles with pleasure but also a survivor’s detachment at the Hollywood heat that has placed at her disposal two publicists and an entire suite complete with flowers, baby grand piano and ocean view. In a screwball moment, she laughingly jostles the reporter, impersonating a paparazzo, then launches into a savvy analysis of her rising Hollywood stock and the vagaries of the star market.

One thing Zeta-Jones knows is that she’s become a salable commodity. In billboards and ads for “Entrapment,” it’s Zeta-Jones’ slinky figure in a leotard that takes center stage--with the legendary Connery off to the side.

“I lived through this once,” she states with a soft lilt that can’t hide her hard-won experience. “I was a celebrity over in the U.K. [as star of the hit TV series “The Darling Buds of May”], and it was a really big problem. Everyone forgot I was an actress. All my hard work, all my theater experience, all the things I gave up because I wanted to succeed in this business and improve my craft was reduced to ‘Oh, she’s got big breasts and she’s a girl!’ Well, I don’t want to be on ‘Hollywood Squares.’ ”

Working Past the Reputation the Tabloids Have Given Her

A star at 20, her celebrity high was an invitation to the tabloids to take her less than seriously, and for a while Zeta-Jones out on the town was a staple for the paparazzi. “There was a point when going partying was much more fun than working on a scene,” she admits. “I kind of lost it a bit, but I never lost my commitment to what I wanted to do, even after they wrote me off.”

Having embraced her as a party girl, her native Britain resisted her as a serious actress, and the tabloids collectively scoffed when she came to America, declaring she was on a mission to save her ailing career. Back home, she was over, yesterday’s spice, a has-been at 24. Convinced she had “something to give that they didn’t get in Britain,” she worked for two years in relative anonymity before Steven Spielberg spotted her sinking on the television “Titanic” and cast her in the international hit “The Mask of Zorro.” One swipe of Zorro’s blade and she put the entire industry on guard.

“The great thing about ‘Zorro’ for me, especially in America, was that no one knew where I came from,” she says. “That role opened up perceptions. There wasn’t an ‘English actress’ sign above my head that flashed, ‘Put me in a corset and give me a cup of tea.’ ”

At first, her role as the daughter of a 19th century Spanish nobleman had many people assuming she was Latina, a mistake she embraces. “It’s great!” she says and laughs. “I’m glad the accent was convincing.” Now that she has starred in two big studio pictures with a third on the way, the actress still gets asked if she’s part Latina, Asian, Italian, depending on what part of the world she’s in.

“I know she’s Welsh, but she has the most amazing face,” says De Bont. “It’s universal. There’s something virtually every culture can relate to.”

It’s expected that if international markets relate as well to her pictures as they do to her face, Zeta-Jones will be one of the few actresses to transcend the industry heat that melts the wings off most next-big-things. Connery lauds her as “one of the most professional” actresses he’s worked with, “which, in my book, is greater than beauty . . . almost.”

“Her professionalism is key,” agrees De Bont, the man who made Sandra Bullock a star in “Speed.” “It’s one thing to be beautiful and talented, but I hate complaining actors who whine about everything. The only time Catherine complained was when her face was swollen because of MSG, but she was still willing to work. The whole crew, the cast and the studio, for that matter, loved working with her.”

Hopkins also gives her high marks. “She’s always on time, knows her lines, and there’s never any fuss. As long as she keeps her heart and her head, she can do it all.”

Though Things Look Good, She Remains a Realist

While grateful for the votes of confidence, Zeta-Jones is a realist. “Somebody in my position right now is just on the cusp of a lot of things--or not. It could so easily go away. So many people arrive, especially in action movies, and just disappear.”

So she’s not banking on building her career off the athleticism that comes from years as a dancer and gymnast. “I take these roles because I love the physicality and I can do it,” she explains. “The day will come, and I’m sure it’s imminent, when I won’t be able to do gymnastics off the ceiling, and these roles won’t be coming my way.

“But take away the action in ‘Entrapment’ and you have a two-person, character-driven movie, so on another level, I bring more as an actress than just my body.”

Hopkins, who co-starred with actresses Emma Thompson and Jodie Foster in their Academy Award-winning roles (“Howards End” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” respectively), says that Zeta-Jones “wouldn’t be where she is now on those looks alone. She’s a passionate actress, and I think she’s terrific. I sound like an old granddad, but if she’s selective about her roles and keeps her nose clean, she can be around a long time.”

Having lived through the supernova of celebrity once, Zeta-Jones is taking the long view.

“I had a conversation with Sean about this,” she says. “I asked him what I should do next to sustain the passion and longevity he’s enjoyed. He said, ‘You can’t wait for the next big movie.’ He’s right, you’re not going to get better at your craft, or have the balls to do certain things, unless you get out there. You have to train and keep everything in tune.”

That training leads her next to a cameo role as John Cusack’s ex-lover in Stephen Frear’s “High Fidelity” simply because “it’s a different kind of character, verybohemian.” After that, she wants to do a project her brother is trying to put together in England and a role in a friend’s film school short.

Then there is the promotional trail for both new movies, a part of the business she seems to accept with good grace. And if De Bont has his way, she’ll star in a science-fiction epic he’s working on with her in mind.

“Then I’m going to take a little break to put back into myself what I’ve been giving out,” she says. “The two hours of popcorn are my job, and I love it, but I’m looking for another life as well. I don’t have a love life right now. For quite a while, I needed the security of a partner, but now it’s OK for me to be a single woman. I understand that if someone’s special enough, you make the time, but personally, based on past experience, there’s nothing worse than being at dinner with somebody you’re interested in while counting the hours until you have to get up to go to work.”

Recently, she’s been speed-reading scripts in search of a romantic comedy but admits that a good one is “the hardest thing to find. I don’t know if my humor stinks, whether I have a different humor than everyone else here or if the scripts just stink.”

With an entourage that these days consists of her close-knit family, she tries to keep stardom in perspective. “I’ve already gone through a really hard time personally and professionally that taught me a lot of good lessons,” she relates with equanimity. “I’ve been so close to losing my sense of reality, but something always pinches me and brings me around.

“I went to ShoWest [the movie exhibitor convention in Las Vegas] this year on a private jet, and I got a 24-hour bug. From the moment I boarded until the next morning, I threw up. The jet was great, but the toilet is a very humbling thing.”