Catherine Zeta Jones to take stand

Catherine Zeta Jones was today making her stand for privacy when she steps into the witness box at the British High Court in London.

The Hollywood star and her husband, Michael Douglas, are giving evidence in their claim for £500,000 damages from a magazine which published unauthorised pictures of their wedding in November, 2000.

Both are claiming that their private lives were violated when the paparazzi gatecrashed their wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York and sold pictures which were published in Hello!

They will have to convince the judge, Mr Justice Lindsay, that their privacy and confidence were breached at the wedding, the exclusive rights to which they had already sold to another celebrity magazine.

The golden couple, whose case began last week, had signed a £1 million deal with OK! magazine after turning down a £1 million plus offer from Hello!

OK! is suing Hello! for £1.75 million for loss of sales.

Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas are considered by many to be the World’s most high-profile golden couple.

As the son of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, star of Spartacus, coping with fame was always a fact of life for Michael Douglas.

Catherine Zeta Jones, by contrast, grew up in Swansea, south Wales, the daughter of a sweet factory manager and a seamstress.

The couple first swapped numbers after meeting at the Deauville French film festival in 1998 where she was promoting her film The Mask Of Zorro.

He later asked asked her out to dinner in Los Angeles, where she was based at the time, but their relationship did not become official until the summer of 1999.

In August 2000 she gave birth to their son Dylan – the second for Douglas, who also has a son, Cameron, from his previous wife Diandra.

The pair were married in a glitzy ceremony at the New York Plaza Hotel three months later.

They recently announced that they are expecting another child in the spring.

Zeta Jones was named best actress at last week’s Evening Standard Film Awards for her appearance alongside Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger playing vampish murderess Velma Kelly in the film version of the musical Chicago.

Fans were left disappointed when the star lost out to co-star Renee Zellweger at the recent Golden Globes.

And at the forthcoming Bafta awards Zellweger has again been nominated for best actress, while Zeta Jones has to settle for the best supporting actress category.

But the role is just the latest in a run of high-profile roles opposite some of Hollywood’s best-known stars.

After performing on the West End stage, she took her first step towards stardom as Mariette Larkin in ITV’s The Darling Buds of May, in 1991.

But it was not until 1998 that she gained international recognition starring in The Mask of Zorro with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.

The following year she appeared opposite former James Bond Sean Connery in Entrapment and with Liam Neeson in The Haunting for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

She starred alongside Douglas in Traffic which was released in 2000 and despite the birth and wedding, Zeta Jones was back on screen the following year, this time alongside Julia Roberts and John Cusack in America’s Sweethearts.

After a series of minor parts in the late 1960s, Douglas got the break that made him a worldwide star by appearing opposite Karl Malden in the police show The Streets of San Francisco in 1972 – when Zeta Jones was just a toddler.

His career as a producer got off to a flying start when he picked up an Oscar for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976.

He later also won an Oscar for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.

Among a long list of film credits his best-known performances include Romancing the Stone (1984), Jewel of the Nile (1985) and Fatal Attraction (1987).

Zeta Jones’s relationship with Douglas followed a string of high-profile romances including with Simply Red front man Mick Hucknall and Braveheart star Angus McFadyen.