{"id":672076,"date":"2026-07-03T18:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672076\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T18:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:09:13","slug":"catherine-zeta-jones-big-break-came-down-to-pure-good-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/672076\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Zeta-Jones&#8217; big break came down to &#8216;pure good fortune&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The producer of a hit TV show says Catherine Zeta-Jones&#8217; breakout role came down to &#8220;pure good fortune&#8221; after he spotted her by chance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pip Burley, who worked on the ITV 90s comedy-drama The Darling Buds of May, recalled meeting the Hollywood star in the reception room of his final casting session.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he spotted &#8220;a beautiful girl&#8221; in a yellow dress and invited her to audition for Mariette, despite Jones only being in the building for a light entertainment programme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She was a lovely girl, and very smart,&#8221; Burley explained. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also revealed that American actor Danny DeVito was once considered to play Pop Larkin,  among other unexpected casting twists. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Burley, who also composed the theme song for the series, said he first spotted Swansea-born Jones on the musical 42nd Street as a second understudy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were struck with her,&#8221; he told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/m002y7sz\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Radio Wales<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The producer of a hit TV show says Catherine Zeta-Jones&#8217; breakout role came down to &#8220;pure good fortune&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-672076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}