Catherine Zeta-Jones, the quintessential oldschool Hollywood starlet, traded in her Michael Kors gown for an apron for the leading role in No Reservations.

“It was refreshing to just stick my hair up with a pencil,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me. We won’t be glamorous and glorious forever!”

Zeta-Jones does not cook and has admitted, “I pass the kitchen, but only to get to another room.” While attempting to impress her soon-to-be-hubby at the time, Michael Douglas, with a homemade meal in her Manhattan apartment, she nearly set the apartment on fire. Douglas was able to extinguish the dangerously high flames on the stove, and came to accept the fact that they would spend their future dining experiences eating out.

Zeta-Jones was thrown into the kitchen with onscreen love interest Aaron Eckhart at only their second meeting. They rolled up their sleeves and got down to business. On the first day the actors were very polite and courteous to each other. By the second day, they were bumping elbows and reaching over each other like real veteran chefs.

Zeta-Jones admits that she feeds her children (Dylan, 6, and Carys, 4) adult food. She would never feed them fish sticks like she did to rising star Abigail Breslin in No Reservations.

Down-to-earth Eckhart was the perfect contrast to the glamorous Zeta-Jones. While she shuns fish sticks on and off screen, Eckhart embraces the simplicities life has to offer. “Well, I’m just really a surfer,” he said. “I like fish tacos and things like that.” Zeta-Jones didn’t always have such a glamorous lifestyle. This daughter of a seamstress and candy factory manager grew up far across the Atlantic in the small fishing town of Mumbles, Whales. She was an average student and above-average dancer and singer. She left a general education school to study musical theater.

Her appearances in stage performances progressed to film, and her first big break in 1998 landed her a leading role alongside Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zoro. After seeing Zeta-Jones in Zoro, Michael Douglas began to court her around the world. Two years later Douglas finally approached her while co-starring in Traffi c and used a risky pick-up line to win her heart: “I want to father your children.”

Nine months without a touch or a kiss was the strategy for Zeta-Jones to not be just another girlfriend to Douglas. “I’m sure he thought, Something’s not right with this chick,” she quipped. “It usually doesn’t take me this long!”

Douglas is exactly 25 years older than his beautiful wife, who shares the same birthday. “I’m used to it,” she said. “It’s never really been an issue for us…. Sometimes I can’t believe it, like when he was in college, I wasn’t a flash in my father’s eye.”

In 2000, the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, Dylan, and their marriage. Seven years later, the couple has added one more child to the brood, Carys, and four estates around the world, in Bermuda, Manhattan, Majorca, and Quebec. In Manhattan, the family crib looks over Central Park. In Majorca their vista sprawls on the Mediterranean. Quebec’s squat frames the slopes of Mount Tremblant. Among all these houses, the place the family most often calls home is in Bermuda, where their daily privacy from the media is most cherished.

“In Bermuda, our lifestyle is different,” said Zeta- Jones. “It’s family-oriented. Here, we go to fancy restaurants, see friends, and go to the theater. I go shopping and my husband goes crazy over how many bags I come home with!”

Initially, the Douglases thought their home in Bermuda would be a weekend house. After all, it is faster for them to fly to Bermuda than to sit in traffic going out to the Hamptons for the weekend. The weekend Bermuda getaway turned into a permanent residence that allowed the family to maintain a low profile.

Zeta-Jones, who considers herself foremost a mother and wife, is proud of her family. She realizes that she cannot get back this time with her children. It’s no longer easy to pack up and leave like she did in a moment’s notice before she started her family. On Occupations Day at school, Dylan was told to explain what his parents do. At the time, Zeta-Jones was away filming, while Douglas was at home with the kids. Dylan told the class, “Mama makes movies. Daddy just makes pancakes!”

The power couple has earned three Oscars between them; one belongs to Zeta-Jones for her performance as Velma Kelly in the film version of Chicago. This brought her back to her singing and dancing roots— she was crowned Britain’s tap-dancing champion as a teenager.

In her three-week training for her part in No Reserva tions, Zeta-Jones waited tables undercover at an Italian restaurant in Soho for a few hours until customers realized who their waitress was. After being outed, she stayed behind the scenes in the kitchen for the remainder of her training.

Leave it to Catherine to fi nd an art form in the mundane tasks of preparing food while attending culinary boot camp. “Even though it was busy and you heard people shouting orders as pans and plates clanked, if you removed the sound, it was like a ballet,” she said.

Zeta-Jones has developed a newfound respect for the food service industry. “Nobody bumped into anyone, and everyone moved gracefully around one another even as 40 meals were being served at one time!” she said.

“The idea of being a chef, for me, was pretty terrifying,” she said. But she immediately connected with the story about a successful, self-suffi cient woman who discovers love in an unlikely place—not far from her own fairytale life.

Although she may be a culinary whiz on screen, it’s her husband who mans the stove at home. “Michael makes breakfast every Sunday,” she said. “That’s his thing.” Their children break the eggs and beat them while their mother sits calmly with her tea and admires her family from afar.

Zeta-Jones will be the fi rst to admit her culinary ability is still mediocre at best. But while highly acclaimed chefs around the world may easily spin circles around her in a kitchen, they would never be able to carry their first lead role in a highly anticipated remake with tousled hair and greasy clothes, and still radiate such elegance.