The second act

On screen Catherine Zeta-Jones has been a famous smoulderer,a one-woman heat source. When Antonio Banderas unfastens her bodice...

On screen Catherine Zeta-Jones has been a famous smoulderer,a one-woman heat source. When Antonio Banderas unfastens her bodice in The Mask of Zorrothe 1998 movie that introduced her to most Americans,including her husband,Michael Douglasyou feel he ought to be wearing oven mitts. Watching her slither in her jewel-thief cat suit in Entrapment 1999,Sean Connery visibly liquefies.

It was this quality,the sultry glamour she brings even to cellphone ads,that Trevor Nunn had in mind when he cast her as Desiree,her first Broadway role,in his revival of A Little Night Music,which opens in New York this week. For good measure,she has been equipped with a fiery red wig,and when she makes her first sustained appearance,performing in a little snippet of play within the play,its as if a gas jet had suddenly flared.

A Little Night Music,with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler,is in large part about aging and mortality. Nunn said recently that a noticeably younger,sexier Desiree was important to his conception of the show,someone around 39,Zeta-Jones age.

He added: Shes at the point where she has to decide whether she still wants to be living out of a suitcase or whether she wants a life thats more settled. But Desiree is pretty much the sex symbol of her age. Shes an actress who plays roles where the sensibility is sexual and glamorous.

The other thing Nunn knew about Zeta-Jones,besides her glamour and sexiness,was that she was,as he put it,a song and dance girl. For most Americans,her Oscar-winning performance as the vamping,song-belting Velma Kelly in Chicago was a revelation,but in fact she grew up in the musical theatre. At 22,she was cast as a lead in The Darling Buds of May,a British mini-series,and overnight became so popular that,as she said,laughing,I could never ride the Underground again.

These days Zeta-Jones,who grew up in Mumbles,a little town outside Swansea,has pretty much tamped down her accent,except when talking to her mother,and then,according to her husband,the two of them sound as if theyre not even speaking English.

Recalling her teenage years in London, Zeta-Jones said: I was a chorus girl. Thats all I ever wantedto be onstage. I would queue up for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. I always got the job. I figured out what they wanted.

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When Zeta-Jones was five,her mother sent her to the dancing school to channel her energy. At nine she won a nationwide audition for Annie,and moved to London with a chaperone and a tutor. I loved it. she said. I loved everything about it. At 11,she was a British tap-dancing champion,and at 19,cast as an understudy,she took over the lead of the play 42nd Street.

Almost ever since,she said,and especially after Chicago,she has wanted to return to the stage,but for one reason or another the right part never came along. She was hitting golf balls on a driving range in Canada last summer when Nunn called about A Little Night Music.

In the show. Zeta-Jones invests her part with a troupers energy and a joyful theatricality thats appropriate for Desiree but may also be autobiographical. Im just so happy to be there, she said after explaining that because of Hollywood economics she wasnt seeing many interesting movie parts these days.

I feel at this point in my life Im in my second chapter. You have to be quite frank with yourself. Theres that wonderful curve,and then this is the way it is: the second act. Its great that now I can go back to my roots but in a completely different way.