Catherine Zeta-Jones has opened up about how she and her husband, fellow film star Michael Douglas, cope with their relationship being in the spotlight.
The Welsh star, who is currently starring in Wednesday on Netflix and is also known for her Oscar-winning turn in Chicago, has been married to Wall Street and Fatal Attraction actor Douglas for 25 years.
Zeta-Jones, 55, and Douglas, 80, share two children – Dylan and Carys, born in 2000 and 2003 respectively.
The couple moved away from New York to Bermuda to raise their family, with Zeta-Jones telling The Sunday Times Style in a new interview: “The city in the summertime is too hot, so Michael took me to the Hamptons and I was like, ‘same people in shorts’. The social calendar is exhausting.
“So Michael took me to Bermuda because his mother was Bermudian and I thought, ‘I love this.’ It’s an hour and a half in a plane. It’s a British colony, there were pictures of the Queen when I went to the bank. So we bought a house there and stayed for 10 years.”
The actor also explained that these days, as a couple, they tend to spend time in their home in Spain, away from the spotlight. She opened up about the challenges of being in such a high-profile relationship, saying: “Two celebrities together make 10. It’s just the way it is. There’s two versions of the story and there’s two make-believes.”
She added: “We don’t listen to the crap that is written about us, that’s the main thing. And we respect our space, we’re independent spirits. We are very similar; we were born on the same day, 25 years apart. We’re not afraid to be verbal, to express ourselves. I wear everything on my sleeve and so does he, which is good.”
The couple have four homes – one in Spain, one in Canada, and two in New York.
Douglas – the son of Kirk Douglas, famous for playing Spartacus in 1960 – recently announced that he has no serious intentions of acting again, instead preferring to “watch my wife work”.
In response to this, Zeta-Jones told Style: “Michael has definitely earned the chance to slow down. But I never say never. He’s his father’s son and loves to work – let’s just say, ‘retirement’ is a flexible concept.”
Douglas was one of the biggest film stars of the 1980s, appearing in Romancing the Stone, Fatal Attraction and Wall Street, for which he won his second Oscar. His first Academy Award was for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The actor dedicated the last 10 years of his career to Marvel, playing Hank Pym in three Ant-Man films as well as 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame.
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