Catherine Zeta-Jones

Born: 25 September 1969
Where: Swansea, Wales

The Welsh actress saw her successful career crowned with an Academy Award for best supporting actress for Chicago.

The daughter of a sweet factory manager, she got her first taste of the stage as part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe.

A child star of local stage musicals such as Annie and Bugsy Malone, she took the lead aged 15 in the West End production of 42nd Street.

In 1990, French director Philippe de Broca tapped the actress for the title role in Sheherazade but she first made a name for herself in the TV drama The Darling Buds of May with David Jason.

In 1998, Zeta-Jones landed the high-profile role of a seductress opposite Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro, and the following year won the female lead opposite Sean Connery in the romantic thriller Entrapment.

In December 1999, her romance with actor Michael Douglas became serious.

The two became parents to Dylan in August 2000 and subsequently married at the end of the year.

The same year, she was seen playing the unwitting wife of a drug lord in the critically-acclaimed feature Traffic.(Although the film co-starred her husband, they did not appear in any scenes together).

In 2003, Zeta-Jones won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as the murderous showgirl Velma Kelly in the musical extravaganza Chicago.

Soon after the 2003 Oscars she gave birth to her second child with Douglas - a daughter Carys.

She provided the voice for Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and was the foil to George Clooney's slick lawyer in the Coen Bros' comedy Intolerable Cruelty.

In 2004 she starred opposite Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg's The Terminal and also played a crime chief in Steven Soderbergh's caper sequel Ocean's Twelve.

She recently reprised her role a Elena opposite Antonio Banderas in the action sequel The Legend of Zorro.