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doing stand-up comedy, for me, is probably a recurring nightmare that will never ever, ever go away. Acting comedically, I really enjoy. I loved working with Billy Crystal and Johnny Cusack in America's Sweethearts. We were cracking up all the time." She also relishes diving deep into her emotions and pushing herself further than she thought possible, which she can explore in dramatic roles. "I'm lucky that I started in theatre...I know what it means to do the same show for two years with different audiences, eight times a week. It's challenging and it's really, really rewarding. So, it's all one of the same really —finding the truth in the character." Catherine is now at a point in her life where she'd rather stay home and sew than work with unsavory people. "This is not brain surgery...this is making entertainment, and I don't want to be around [that], and I have been in the past, early on in my career. People are just plain mean and make you sad. So, for me, now, I'm only working with great people who have no attitude and who want to work as hard as me to get it done and have no ego —that's it," she says matter-of-factly. Her passion for sewing and home decor informed her latest venture: Casa Zeta-Jones. A self-proclaimed "frustrated interior designer and architect," Catherine has also been channeling her creative energy into decorating her homes and sewing curtains, a skill inherited from her mother and great-grandmother, who were seamstresses. "Basically it's like, I don't want to take that job with those a-holes and those egomaniacs, what am I going to do?" One day, while watching Shark Tank —as she always does— she thought, Who would be my shark? She concluded it would be FUBU founder Daymond John, so she phoned him with her proposition. Since the two had never spoken or met before, Daymond initially assumed she was calling to invite him to a party, she tells me. "Two years later, I have a brand and he's my business partner. It's a lot of work, but I just love it. It's like a hobby that went viral." Casa Zeta-Jones, which is available on QVC, boasts luxurious, vintage-inspired, home decor —bedding, pillows, rugs— as well as pretty pajama sets and robes. Of all the rooms Catherine has decorated in her Bedford, New York mansion, her favorite is their cavernous, Moroccan-inspired family room — appointed with decadent fabrics and loads of pillows piled atop two huge Chinese daybeds. Perfect for entertaining, the room has a big big-screen T V, piano, and karaoke machine. "I lie in there on a Sunday and read a bit, nap a bit with one of my throws. When my house is full, with all my family from Wales and Michael's family, my nieces and my nephews, we all congregate there before dinner and then after dinner." This November, Catherine and Michael will celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary. The secret to their successful marriage, Catherine tells me, is being kind, tolerant, and forgiving of one another. "First of all, we spend so much time going, 'Thank you' to total strangers. 'Thank you so much. Oh, I appreciate it. You're so sweet.' And then you go home and are like, Mehh! to the person you love more than anything else in the world. So that's a bit of mantra for us. It's like, OK, leave that all out there, come in, and just be kind to each other. And he's my best friend, y'know? Through thick and thin. I lucked out, he's a very special person." What do you admire most about Michael? "He's a good citizen of the planet. A lot of egos in the acting world, and there's a lot of people we don't see outside their bubble in this world, but he looks outside the bubble. He's really concerned with what's going on out there. He's philanthropic. He's thoughtful. Great friend. He's loyal. His loyalty to other people and his loyalty to the planet and what's good, what's right —that's what I admire more than anything," she replies fondly. Catherine truly believes that the two of them, who met at the 1998 Deauville Film Festival in France, were destined to be together. "I do believe in destiny. I probably would've met him at some film festival in my life, y'know? Look, all the odds seemed to be against us. Ugh, it will never last [all the naysayers said]. Well, it did," she says with a smile. She also believes in compatibility based off astrology —Catherine and Michael share the same birthday, September 25th. "25 years apart! People are starting to forget that. God damn men!" she quips with a smile. "Sometimes we look at each other and it's like we know, kinda, what the other is thinking. I totally believe in that. There is an alignment of where you are born and I don't know whether it's the date or...I don't know, but for sure." Their handwriting is even similar. "I've been in New York or he's been in L.A. working and we're both in different hotels and we're both having room service and we both order the same thing: beet salad and something. I just ordered beet salad. Really? Me too." While the couple have tried to work together on screen, nothing has panned out yet. "It's always a bit weird when you're married to somebody, it takes the movie magic out of it, I think. They certainly don't want us kissing on screen. It's like, 'Eww, go home to do that. I'm not paying to see that!' The idea of us wanting to kill each other, like Kathleen Turner and him in War of the Roses, that makes sense. That's fun. People like that. They go, 'Oh my god, those guys are crazy together!'" ML