Playing the Field
Rock of Ages
Lay the Favorite
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
The Sunday Times has published it’s 2012 Rich List and Sir Terry Matthews, Sir Tom Jones and Catherine Zeta Jones all make it into the top 20 richest people in Wales.
The Newbridge born business man, who is reportedly worth £1.09billion, has regained the top spot on Wales’ rich list. The telecoms tycoon last topped the list in 2009.
According to the survey, since last year the 68 year-olds fortunes has reportedly grown by £47m.
In second place is Cardiff born Michael Moritz who set up the internet site Linkedin. Stakes in social media websites, including Facebook, Linkedin and Badoo have boosted the wealth of a number of millionaires in the latest** **rich list.
In third place is founder of Specsavers, Douglas Perkins and his wife Dame Mary. Last year they topped the list of the richest people in Wales.
Both Sir Tom Jones and Catherine Zeta have also kept hold of a spot within the top 20 of the Sunday Times Rich List.
- 1. Sir Terry Matthews – £1,090m
- 2. Michael Moritz – £1,082m
- 3. Douglas Perkins – £870m
- 4. Simon Nixon – £536m
- 5. Henry Engelhardt – £528m
- 6. Steve Morgan – £410m
- 7. David Sullivan – £400m
- 8. Sir Stanley and Peter Thomas – £225m
- 9. Malcolm Walker – £200m
- 10. Catherine Zeta-Jones – £185m
- 11. Dai and Richard Walters – £180m
- 12. Sir Tom Jones – £140m
- 13. David and Heather Steven – £137m
- 14. Duncan Cameron – £132m
- 15. Sir Chris Evans – £120m
- 16. = Andrew Owens and Alex Lewis – £110m
- 16. = Andy Pritchard – £110m
- 18. Hayley Parsons – £95m
- 19. William Lloyd – £93m
- 20. Bernard Rees Smith – £90m
- 21. Andrew Vicari – £85m
- 22. = Tarsem Dhaliwal – £80m
- 22. = James Hull – £80m
- 24. Peter Darwell – £77m
According to the complete Sunday Times Rich List the wealthiest 1,000 people in the UK are now worth a record £414 billion.
There are 77 billionaires in the 2012** **rich list this year, two more than the previous record of 75 in 2008 and the threshold to even be among the 1,000 richest people in Britain rose by £2 million on last year – with individuals needing at least £72 million to make the list.
Hollywood star Catherine Zeta Jones is being lined up for yet another movie, this time reuniting with her Steven Soderbergh her directed her and her husband Michael Douglas in the critically acclaimed drugs drama Traffic.
Swansea-born Zeta Jones is reportedly in the frame for a starring role in a new psychological thriller, Side Effects.
Major stars Jude Law and Channing Tatum are also in talks about parts in the movie.
Catherine, 42 is due to play a doctor in Side Effects which follows a depressed young woman who starts using prescription drugs to help her cope with her husband’s forthcoming release from prison.
Law and Tatum have also worked with award-winning film maker Soderbergh in the past.
Sherlock Holmes star Law starred in Soderbergh’s highly rated disaster flick Contagion, while Channing Tatum worked with him on Haywire.
Production is on Side Effects is due to start in April in New York where Zeta Jones and Douglas are now based.
Zeta Jones has been involved in a number of movies recently including the newly released Lay the Favourite co-starring Bruce Willis.
She plays Bruce Willis’s wife in the comedy drama, about a group of middle-aged men who find a way to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas for their financial gain.
She has also completed filming on comedy Playing The Field, in which she appears alongside an all-star cast of Gerard Butler, Uma Thurman, Dennis Quaid and Jessica Biel.
She also stars in the eagerly awaited movie musical Rock of Ages.
Catherine plays Patricia Whitmore in the big-screen adaptation, whose plans to transform the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles is opposed by rock enthusiasts played by Russell Brand, Julianne Hough and Alec Baldwin.
Tom Cruise also stars as past-it rock god Stacee Jaxx.
Catherine is currently filming crime thriller Broken City with Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe in New York.
Douglas and Zeta Jones have just returned from a New Year holiday in the sun in Panama with their children Dylan, 11 and Carys, eight.
EDIT: The film “Lay the Favourite” will premiere Jan. 21 in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival.
HOLLYWOOD actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and her husband Michael Douglas have hosted a glittering birthday party for a show business friend in New York.
The guests at the 80th birthday party for theatre and film producer Marty Richards included screen legend Robert De Niro and his wife Grace.
Douglas, 67, is a cousin of Richards’ late wife, Marylea Johnson.
Douglas and Swansea-born Catherine, 42, were the “honorary chairs” of the party and welcomed guests to the venue, the Rubin Art Museum in New York’s plush Chelsea district.
As well as DeNiro and wife, other guests included Chicago director Rob Marshall (Marty Richards being the producer of the stage musical and the movie in which Zeta Jones won an Oscar), actor and comedian Steve Guttenberg, plus Broadway star Lilias White and a host of other actors, actresses and well known personalities.
A telegram of congratulations was also read out at the bash from New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Marty Richards has been a longtime supporter of the Mary Lea Johnson Richards Transplant Centre in New York in memory of his late wife. The unit opened in 1990, a year after MaryLea’s death, and has been a leader in liver and kidney transplant work.
Proceeds from the party will go towards the unit’s work and research.
Catherine Zeta-Jones wore a stunning black dress and red heels for the party, while Douglas wore a navy tuxedo, white shirt and red tie.
Friends commented on how relaxed and happy Douglas and Zeta-Jones looked after rocky times.
In August 2010 Douglas announced he had throat cancer and last year Zeta-Jones revealed she was being treated for a mild form of bipolar disorder.
Her publicist Cece Yorke said she had sought treatment at a “mental health facility” after the stress of Michael’s illness triggered the disorder.
She said: “After dealing with the stress of the past year, Catherine made the decision to check in to a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her Bipolar II disorder”.
Also last year Douglas’s son Cameron was jailed for drugs offences.
But after Douglas announced his recovery from cancer this time last year both got back to work.
He is currently promoting his latest movie Haywire, which will be released on January 20.
The action film has an all-star cast which includes Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas and Michael Fassbender.
Zeta-Jones has been involved in a number of movies recently including her latest project Lay the Favorite co-starring Bruce Willis.
She plays Bruce Willis’s wife in the comedy drama, about a group of middle-aged men who find a way to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas for their financial gain.
She has also completed filming on comedy Playing The Field, in which she appears alongside an all-star cast of Gerard Butler, Uma Thurman, Dennis Quaid and Jessica Biel.
She also stars in the eagerly-awaited movie musical Rock of Ages.
Catherine plays Patricia Whitmore in the big-screen adaptation, whose plans to transform the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles is opposed by rock enthusiasts played by Russell Brand, Julianne Hough and Alec Baldwin.
Tom Cruise also stars as past-it rock god Stacee Jaxx.
Catherine is currently filming crime thriller Broken City with Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe in New York.
Douglas and Zeta Jones have just returned from a New Year holiday in the sun in Panama with their children Dylan, 11 and Carys, eight.
Source: walesonline.co.uk
Michael Douglas will be honored with the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Monte Cristo Award in a ceremony to be held at the Edison Ballroom on Monday, April 16. Tony Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is Douglas’ wife, will serve as presenter of the award.
Douglas has won Academy Awards for his performance in Wall Street and for producing the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Among his many other screen credits as an actor are Fatal Attraction, Romancing the Stone, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, Disclosure, and The American President. In addition, he received a Theatre World Award for his performance in George Tabori’s Pinkville off-Broadway.
The Monte Cristo Award is given to a prominent theater artist in recognition of a distinguished career exemplifying Eugene O’Neill’s “pioneering spirit, unceasing artistic commitment, and excellence.”
For more information and tickets, click here.
While January is generally considered a dumping ground for studio leftovers, don’t tell that to Mark Wahlberg. His upcoming thriller “Contraband” is slated for release on January 13, 2012 and it looks like the actor wants to keep starting off your year with a bang, because he’s got another film a year later, pretty much right in the same frame.
The crime noir “Broken City” co-starring Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones will now land on January 18, 2013 via 20th Century Fox who have acquired the film, reports THR. Set to be directed by Allen Hughes, the dark tale follows Billy Taggart (Wahlberg), an ex-cop thrown off the force after shooting a 16-year-old kid. Eight years on, he’s working as a private detective and is hired by the colorful incumbent in the New York mayoral race to investigate his wife’s infidelity. Taggart, however, digs up much, much more including a shady real estate deal in a story of city corruption that is not unlike “Chinatown.” Crowe will play the mayor, with Zeta-Jones as his philandering wife. But the movie will have some big competition that weekend.
Lionsgate has already slated “The Last Stand” with Arnold Schwarzenegger for that date, so somebody is gonna have to blink as they will be playing right to the same crowd. But there is still plenty of time for release date jostling to happen. This is another high profile flick to go to the typically awful early winter frame. Tom Cruise‘s “One Shot” is another straight genre piece that will be arriving on February 8, 2013. With summer dates now getting more and more competitive, it seems studios are trying to find gaps in the calendar where they can have a bit more breathing room to play as evidenced by the move of “Thor 2” to November 15, 2013. Whether this roll of the dice will pay off remains to be seen—those pesky students are still in school and not looking to occupy their time. But it’s the mark of a trend that is worth keeping an eye on.
Catherine Zeta-Jones is back in action and looking great.
The actress, 41, who revealed that she’d been diagnosed with and treated for bipolar II disorder, is already back to work – and beaming.
Zeta-Jones appeared to be all smiles Wednesday on the Shreveport, Louisiana, set of the comedy Playing the Field, which also stars Jessica Biel and Gerard Butler.
She’s also already lined up her next project: Zeta-Jones has signed on to star in the film version of Rock of Ages, PEOPLE confirms. She’ll play the wife of the L.A. mayor, a conservative character who wants to do away with rock and roll, according to Deadline.com.
When Catherine Zeta-Jones received a recent diagnosis of bipolar II disorder, a mental illness marked by prolonged periods of depression alternating with episodes of mild mania, she didn’t hesitate to step forward with the news.
“This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them,” the actress, 41, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive statement in this week’s cover story. “If my revelation of having bipolar II has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.”
In early April, the Oscar-winning wife of actor Michael Douglas, 66, and mom to son Dylan, 10, and daughter Carys, 8, checked in to Silver Hill Hospital, a mental-health facility in New Canaan, Conn.
Shaken by Douglas’s battle with throat cancer, Zeta-Jones was privately struggling, a friend says. As Douglas recovered, Zeta-Jones didn’t – and with her new movie, the romantic comedy Playing the Field, slated to start shooting in Louisiana, the actress realized she needed help in the face of mounting depression.
“The simple things would just seem overwhelming, like going out to dinner,” says the close friend. “There was just a little piece of her chipped away. It was hard to watch because I knew how hard she was trying.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones is in final negotiations to join the cast of director Adam Shankman’s musical Rock of Ages.
Zeta-Jones, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for 2002′s big screen musical Chicago, will play the villain of the movie, a part that was not in the stage production.“It’s a character that we only really came to in the last month,” said Shankman. “The character was invented to streamline the stories.”
Shankman described the character as “if Tipper Gore and Anita Bryant had a love child. She is this hardcore, moral majority, arch-conservative who wants to shut down rock’n roll in the great city of Los Angeles.”
“It’s like the musical gods just blessed us!” he said regarding Zeta-Jones’ boarding.Based on the Broadway musical, the New Line production, which is scheduled to begin shooting May 19 in Miami, is also set to star newcomer Diego Gonzalez Boneta along with Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Mary J. Blige, Paul Giamatti and Julianne Hough.Ages tells the story, replete with hair-band music, of a small-town girl (Hough) who comes to Hollywood for the 1980s music scene and is nearly destroyed by it. Although she falls for a budding musician named Drew (Boneta), she also catches the eye of Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), an arrogant rocker at the height of his career, ends up as a stripper in a club run by Blige but also finds true love at the end.Shankman’s Offspring Entertainment, Tobey Maguire’s Maguire Entertainment and Corner Store Entertainment are producing, with Garrett Grant serving as exec producer.
HOLLYWOOD star Catherine Zeta Jones has withdrawn her patronage of the Swansea Bay Film Festival after criticisms of the event in a widely viewed YouTube documentary.
It follows the decision last month of in demand Port Talbot actor Michael Sheen to resign as vice president of the six-year-old festival.
Film festival founder Binda Singh of Brynmill, Swansea, said today he was very disappointed at the news but added this years festival would carry on as planned.
In their short film, Looking for an Audience, film makers Steve Rosen and Terry Di Bono claimed they travelled 7,000 miles from California to find there had been little publicity of the Swansea Bay Film Festival.
They also complained their movie Boyhood Shadows was shown at last years festival in the Swansea Dylan Thomas Centre at the same time as a free drinks reception with then Lord Mayor of Swansea vastly reducing the audience.
Their critical YouTube film has now been viewed around the world.
Swansea born Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones had previously said of the festival: I am proud to be part of the Swansea Bay Film Festival.
It provides a great opportunity for the city and is a showcase for local talent.
But Mr Singh confirmed to WalesOnline today that he learned in a conversation with Zeta-Joness brother Lyndon on Tuesday night the actress was now withdrawing her patronage.
He said: This years festival, attracting independent filmmakers from across the world, will be the longest in its history with 10 days of movie screenings between May 5-15.
The event will climax with an awards banquet and ceremony at the Towers Hotel in Jersey Marine.
Mr Singh said: I cannot speak for her but I feel Catherines decision must have been influenced by the anti-Swansea Bay Film Festival brigade inspired by our Californian friends.
We made mistakes and we are showing films back to back at this years festival to maximise the audience for each movie.
Essentially we are a small Welsh festival which has fallen foul of two skilled American film makers who took umbrage because their movie coincided with a free drinks reception.
When they got here it was as if they were expecting Cannes.
Catherine Zeta-Jones, who has been by husband Michael Douglas’s side during his cancer fight, has sought mental health treatment for herself, her rep says.
“After dealing with the stress of the past year, Catherine made the decision to check in to a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her Bipolar II disorder,” the rep says in a statement. “She’s feeling great and looking forward to starting work this week on her two upcoming films.”
Zeta-Jones, 41, spent about five days in the unidentified facility, a friend tells PEOPLE.
Bipolar disorder, a mental illness marked by elevated or irritable moods alternating with periods of depression, afflicts about 6 million Americans. Those with Bipolar II tend to have more depression, with the mood swings spread over a longer time and the “up” periods less elevated. The episodes can be triggered by major stress or life changes.
“There’s no question it’s been a stressful year,” the friend says. “Catherine has had deal with Michael’s illness and that’s been hard. She went in for a few days because she’s about to start working, and wanted to make sure she’s in top form, which she is.”
Douglas, 66, announced in January he was declared free of cancer after what he called a “wild six-month ride” of chemotherapy and radiation for a tumor on his tongue.
“The hardest part is seeing his fatigue, because Michael is never tired,” Zeta-Jones told PEOPLE last year when Douglas was in the midst of his cancer battle.
She said Douglas told their children Dylan, 10, and Carys, 7, the difficult news himself: “Daddy sat them down and told them he has cancer now.”