WHAT HOME MEANS TO ME Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones

What home means to me

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES

THE WELL-TRAVELLED ACTRESS IS HAPPIEST WITHIN HER OWN FOUR WALLS

MY first memory of home was my mum and dad’s house in Wales. Even though I’ve lived Stateside for 24 years, I still say Wales is home. My mother loved soft furnishings and I think that’s where I get my passion for interior design. I remember the smell and the cosiness of home, lots of family around and lots of beautiful fabrics everywhere. My mother was a seamstress and I would literally walk on pins she had dropped in the shagpile carpet.

WHEN I was 15 I had zero money and was touring around Britain in the production The Pajama Game, living in digs for 10 months. I would take my mother’s fabrics and drape them over smelly couches and risk health and safety by putting scarves over lamps. I carried a bag of tricks that my mum called ‘the Mary Poppins bag’ – I still do. It has beautiful tapestries and I take my own bedlinen and pillows. Sometimes when I’m going to a fancy hotel I think: ‘Should I take them? No, Catherine that’s ridiculous.’

I HAVE been doing homes all my life and been brought up around fabric and dressmaking and curtain-making, so to have my lifestyle brand Casa Zeta-Jones is an amazing creative outlet for me. I have been on the move since I was 15 and have lived in London, Paris, LA, New York and Bermuda – this is why home for me is always where my family is.

MICHAEL and I love property. My favourite room is our library in New York. It is a British-style wood-panelled 1920s library with a spiral staircase. I’ve collected British female portraiture from auction, eBay and a Welsh estate. There is a big old fireplace, mid-century furniture to mix the old with the new, and my Oscar for Chicago on the mantel, so when I get insecure I can say, ‘It’s alright, it’s alright!’.

WHAT the last year has shown me is I am a real homebody at heart. Yes I love to travel, but I’m at my happiest in my four walls that I created myself. It is eclectic and chic, and I can potter here for days. What has been difficult is I love to have people around. I’m not happy unless every room is filled with people. And that came from my childhood.

THE time I felt most at home was when my kids Dylan and Carys were little and we were living in Bermuda. It was a completely different environment, but the consistency was reminiscent of the way I was brought up. Michael or I would work and the other would pick up the children from school. Their childhood memories are so wonderful: waking up and being at the beach, swimming in the ocean, climbing rocks and trees. I was young, I’d won an Oscar, it was before my husband’s cancer, which was really traumatic for him and our family, so it was a golden time. And there was total privacy, which was paramount for us bringing up our children. We have great fond memories of being there. &

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PHOTOGRAPH UDO SPREITZENBARTH FEATURE DANIELLE LAWLER