Just call me

She's married to Hollywood royalty, has hobnobbed with actual royalty and is one of the most recognisable faces on both big and small screens. But, The Weekly discovers, the girl from Wales is refreshingly down-to-earth despite her decades in the celebrity spotlight.

- CELIA WALDEN

Catherine Zeta-Jones is telling me about The One That Got Away. It still haunts her, even after all these years. If only the timing had been right. And no, we're not talking about a man, but a role: the role she was born to play.

"I had the chops to be a female Bond," explains the Oscar-winning star of Chicago. "For many years I was Bond material. Actually, I used to dream of being a female spy when I was a kid - if I didn't make it as an actress. Then, later, I had big aspirations, and this was before there was even a female Doctor Who."

Why the past tense? There's a well-publicised 007 vacancy, and Catherine is on a professional roll. Netflix has premiered Tim Burton's addition to The Addams Family franchise, Wednesday - in which she plays Morticia Addams - and now she stars in the long-awaited Disney+ TV spin-off to the hit Nicolas Cage movies, National Treasure: Edge of History.

James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli might be reading this, I say, and barking out to her assistant: "Get me Catherine on the phone!" So if she gets the call? "Oh, it would absolutely be a yes. No question."

Deadpanning is just one form of humour that doesn't usually translate over Zoom. People rarely translate over Zoom. But Catherine is different. From the second the 53-year-old is beamed into my LA home from her Paris hotel suite - all in black, flashes of gold and silver rings on her hands - it's like we're in the same room. Only there are none of the usual interviewer/interviewee barriers in place and there's none of the awkwardness.

She's enthusiastic in her responses, and constantly moving, waving around long champagne-tipped nails as she speaks, threading them through her trademark dark hair, and leaning so close into her screen as she laughs that I get treated to massive close-ups of that cartoonishly seductive mouth.