It’s been amazing to see and hear Swansea getting National attention over the past few weeks. Catherine Zeta Jones has been back in the UK doing lots of promotional interviews about her new series on Amazon Prime called ‘Kill Jackie’.
The role is something rather unusual for Catherine. I don’t mean that because she plays a former International Drug dealer who has to go on the run when she is targeted by the worlds most sinister and successful team of psychopathic assassins called ‘The Seven Demons’. I don’t mean it’s different because she starts the serious by biting the ear off a security guard or that she can handle a serious of weapons like the member of the SAS.
All of this is a far cry from ’The Darling Buds of May’ and her new series based on the Adams family called ‘Wednesday’.
Admittedly she wasn’t afraid to wield a sword in Zorro and she was convicted for murder in Chicago, but this role is different. She plays the role using her old Swansea accent.
This is also a very real proper Swansea accent. As she says its not like an accent form the Mumbles!!! Most of the series is set in Bilbao but she still manages to get Swansea, including Mumbles, into the show. One or two episodes in you accept that this is all part of here character Jackie Price’s back story. Knowing all that I have to say that one scene caught me by surprise making me laugh out loud. Jackie Price is just about to assassinate one of her opponents in the most brutal way and has set up the scene overlooking a Bilboa beauty spot dressed as a bride. As her partner in crime tried to pull away she drags him back to her saying, ‘Come on give me a cwtch’.
https://youtu.be/foqlBas6vEI?si=BRG3UVzbWSi9gloC
As part of the press junket Catherine appeared on last week’s Graham Norton Show. The story of her breakthrough sounds like the plot of a Hollywood Musical. In fact it is the plot of the show ‘42nd Street’ the musical she was in as a member of the company playing 2nd understudy to the main star. In the show the understudy has to go on to save the show and becomes a star. In real life 17 year old Catherine was just another member of the cast. The leading lady was on holiday and the understudy was taken ill. Catherine was thrust into the leading role.
Now as ‘luck’ would have it the shows bug American Producer David Merrick was in the audience and offered her the role on a permanent basis. She never looked back. How lucky was she?
Well yes that was an amazing set of circumstances but was she just…lucky?
I came across a post on social media with a zoologist talking about lions catching antelopes. On the face of it the lion has a pretty difficult job trying to catch this speed machine running for its life. If he is lucky the lion gets to have his dinner. But the point the zoologist wanted to make is that
‘Not every lion that chases an antelope catches an antelope,
but you can guarantee every lion that catches an antelope was chasing an antelope.’
As a kid growing up in Brynhyfryd I always hoped that in the 2 weeks of Wimbledon someone would come across me playing tennis in Llewelyn’s Park (Parc Llewelyn) and discover me. Now looking back there are a few flaws in that plan. One, any tennis coaches in the area would probably have been watching Wimbledon on the telly those 2 weeks rather than walking around Llewelyn’s Park. Secondly, I only ever played tennis for 2 weeks every year and I wasn’t very good!!!
The things that the zoologist was saying is really nothing new. Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula in 4 BC. He wrote plays essays and 124 letters that have all survived to the present age. One of his most famous sayings is,
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”
Seneca was a Stoic who believed that you can’t control outside events or people or the past. You can only control your own thoughts and actions. With that in mind you can’t ever really control external events and random ‘luck’ is always outside of our control. The only thing we can do is be prepared for opportunities when they arise.
Now back to Catherine Zeta Jones. If you look back at her career up to that 42nd Street moment she had trained and practiced almost all of her life. She went to the Hazel Johnson School Of Dance aged 4. At the age of 9 she was on the West End stage performing in the musical Annie. It wasn’t long before she was playing the lead role of Tallulah in the West End Production of Bugsy Malone.
She soon left school and went to live in London never taking no for an answer. She is quoted as saying,
“I would queue up for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. It might take me two tries, but I always got the job. I figured out what they wanted”
After the success of Darling Buds of May she could have settled into a very successful British based Tv career but her sights were set on Hollywood and so she left for Los Angeles and almost had to start again.
It took some time and some films that didn’t set the world alight for her to find success in The Mask of Zorro’. On the Graham Norton Show she explained that she did the fencing scenes herself and that all of her dancing training helped her make the moves look natural. Then of course came Chicago, a role she was born to play which led to her winning an Oscar.
She has earned her success and now she has the strength and power to call the shots enough to play a leading role sounding as if she really does come from our town. She should be an inspiration to all of us. Don’t just wait for luck to come calling, practice and dream and chase your antelope whatever that might be.