Catherine Zeta-Jones's Real Name: Catherine Zeta Jones

Quick answer: Catherine Zeta-Jones was born Catherine Zeta Jones on September 25, 1969, in Swansea, Wales. Zeta is her middle name. Her birth surname is Jones, and she later joined the two with a hyphen to make her professional name. She won the Academy Award for best supporting actress as Velma Kelly in Chicago (2002) (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica states directly: "Zeta was her middle name; she added the hyphen later." The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Zeta-Jones, Catherine, 1969-." Its variants include "Jones, Catherine Zeta," "Jones, Catherine," and "Zeta Jones-Douglas, Catherine." One citation reads "b. Catherine Jones, Sept. 25, 1969, Swansea, Wales; sometimes credited as Catherine Zeta Jones."

Britannica says her parents were Irish and Welsh. As a child she performed with her church's amateur theater group and starred in its production of Annie. At 13 she won a national tap-dancing competition. At 15 she left school for London. Two years later she took over the lead in a West End revival of 42nd Street when both the star and the first understudy were unavailable, and the producer kept her in the role.

Career highlights

She became famous in Britain as Mariette Larkin in the TV series The Darling Buds of May in the early 1990s. After intense press attention, including crashing her car while trying to escape photographers, she moved to the United States. Her performance in the 1996 miniseries Titanic caught Steven Spielberg's eye, and it led to her breakout in The Mask of Zorro (1998). She followed with Entrapment (1999) opposite Sean Connery, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000), and High Fidelity. She married actor Michael Douglas in 2000.

Her singing and dancing as Velma Kelly in Chicago won her the Oscar. Later films include Intolerable Cruelty, The Terminal, Ocean's Twelve, The Legend of Zorro, No Reservations, Rock of Ages, Side Effects, and RED 2. On television she played Olivia de Havilland in Feud and Griselda Blanco in Cocaine Godmother (both 2017). She also starred in Queen America and has played Morticia Addams on Netflix's Wednesday since 2022. She appeared in National Treasure: Edge of History.

Name notes for searchers

Many people assume "Zeta-Jones" is an inherited double surname. Britannica and LOC show that it combines her middle name and surname. Older credits list her as Catherine Zeta Jones, without the hyphen. LOC also records "Jones-Douglas" forms linked to her marriage to Michael Douglas, but she is billed as Catherine Zeta-Jones.