Allure: Catherine Zeta-Jones Has More Money Than You Do

Is Allure trying to make us hate Catherine Zeta-Jones? Reading “The Last Showgirl,” August, took our inchoate suspicions about the actress—she comes across as exceptionally high-maintenance, yes?—and magnified them. Naturally, there’s nothing outright derogatory in the profile other than the detail that the Zeta-Jones/Douglas décor includes a bronze statue of Atlas. (Just imagine the kind of apartment that must be.  Yikes!) But there are enough ambiguous moments in the interview that we have to wonder whether writer Brooke Hauser is trying to tell us something. Ah, subtext!

Catherine Zeta-Jones just happens to be good at being a movie star. It’s evident in the langourous way that she moves through a room, as if there were a trail of servants behind her, eager to peel her a grape.

Perhaps it’s because we don’t employ any domestic help, but we aren’t even sure what this means. How does a person behave as if a squadron of servants were tagging along? By barking out random orders? Leaving a trail of clothes on the floor? Even if you did have an actual team of assistants standing by (as CZJ surely does), it would be obnoxious to act as if you expected other people to do your bidding.

There’s a lot to glean from the bottles of Pellegrino, the housekeeper padding silently through the apartment, the shelves dedicated to heavy, leather-bound volumes of the couple’s past scripts, not to mention Michael’s two little gold men. “My Oscar’s in Bermuda”—the Douglases’ main residence—because “Bermuda’s never had one,” she quips.

A lot to glean, indeed! Gracious, those Bermudans must be so grateful that someone so magnificent deigns to keep a gold statuette within their borders! Do they give awards for condescension and self-aggrandizement? Because maybe she could keep those in Bermuda too!

Also, leather-bound scripts? Please. Like the repartee in Ocean’s Twelve was worth immortalizing.

Click-clack past the laundry closet, where she stops to roll her eyes and joke, “I’m constantly in there.”

Oh, another hilarious riposte! We know it’s a joke because ultra-glam movie stars would never stoop to doing their own laundry! How preposterous! They have servants for that! Ha! Hey, Catherine? We aren’t comedy experts or anything, but that remark is only funny to you because—wait for it—you don’t actually have to do your own wash. Outrageous privilege is, like, riotously funny!

And finally:

“I didn’t want to be another girlfriend of Michael Douglas,” she admits. “I remember feeling this immediate attraction and going, What are you going to do: Invest, like, a night or something? I didn’t want to put myself in that situation.” So, she did what any self-respecting woman in her situation would do: She tortured him. “Nine months without a touch or a kiss,” she says, with a light snort. “I’m sure he thought, Something’s not right with this chick. It usually doesn’t take me this long.”

At last, clear instructions for self-respecting women—simply string men along for months on end to make them appreciate you. Playing hard-to-get is the only way to make guys respect you, since you don’t have anything else to offer. Men do love a chase (and, apparently, being chaste)!

Presumably, this article is meant to be positive press (take note, Britney), and maybe CZJ is the kindest, most generous person in the world. We’ll never know her true nature for sure, but this article didn’t exactly have us signing up for membership in the Catherine Zeta-Jones fan club. But what do we know? We eat the peel on our grapes.

Comments

[aulelia]

she comes across really arrogant here especially the bermuda comment. i am actually quite surprised @ how up herself she sounds. i spend half of my living in britain and i know that many welsh people are not as arrogant as she is and she is welsh so i hope she doesnt taint that!

[shart]

I also found this article to be incredibly off-putting. The "trailing servants" comment was just nauseatingly bad writing. Allure has become a little too haughty for its own good. The magazine I used to love is now pretentious, snotty and without any direction.

In most interviews Catherine presents as incredibly elitist, arrogant and snobby. I remember when she was lying about her age and was outed for it. That was a rather fine moment.

[Liberty]

Great pithy analysis. Who really knows what goes on in anyone else's head... but I think weall know that if a writer drops clues like that in a puff piece, then the subject must have seriously got up her nose... (Great piece Allure - very clever)

[Caroline]

I haven't read the Allure article yet. (Curses, Allure! Why doth I even have a blasted subscription when you deliver it later than I could pick it up at ye neighborhood grocery?)

However, must chime in, that I met CZJ when I worked as a humble admin assistant at a charter air company and she and her hubby got stranded because the charter plane they booked had a mechanical problem.

Seeing as she is one of my personal Hollywood icons, I insinuated myself on her and Michael Douglas with a foolproof ruse: I announced I was going to Starbucks and asked if anyone might want anything?

Well, naturally, my little plan worked, and she requested two lattes straight away. My observations about her at this critical juncture were as follows. . .

She was:

1. Stunning
2. Charming
3. Gracious
4. Polite
5. Very attentive to her husband
6. Not pretentious
7. Not holier-than-thou
8. Duly thankful when I returned with her aforementioned
latte

At no time did she act like a diva or treat anyone like they owed her anything.

And did I mention that she is stunning?

[Shyamini]

I don't believe that Catherine Zeta Jones has much interest in making herself appealing to anyone. She comes across as hugely conceited, arrogant, materialistic and insensitive to others. She doesn't need to be any other way, she's got she wanted, at whatever cost. She is an actress of extremely modest ability and had she not pulled off such a coup in marrying Michael Douglas, by now, no one would remember her name. Her manifest lack of acting skills probably wouldn't even sustain her in a career as a bit part actor on UK tv.
Ms. Jones is absolutely 'up herself', as is evinced by her name. She presents it as though it is a double barreled surname. It's just her middle name but she doesn't want to be just plain boring Jones,so she adds a bit of allure to it. She is such a 'tard, she doesn't even know what the name means. She said it was the name of her grandmother and meant 'love'. It doesn't. It's just a letter of the Greek alphabet.

If anyone is wondering, no, happily most Welsh people are not like her. I am Welsh and she is not popular there- not because she is a success and we can't stand being gnawed away from the insides, our minds burning with jealous loathing that we'll never be able to own so much designer tat that we can't move for it. Or will never be fortunate to be able to enhance the lives of others the way Catherine has by allowing her Oscar to reside, rent free perhaps, on that culturally and artistically bereft desert of pitiable nothingness that is Bermuda.

Finally, she did nothing but damage her reputation further when she did a voiceover for some Welsh historical tv programme and did it in a massively over the top Welsh accent. She ain't sounded Welsh for years but she will if paid.