“Michael was there promoting A Perfect Murder, and he asked to meet me,” she recalled to the New Yorker in April. “I remember I walked through the door of the hotel when I arrived, and he walked right past me with his golf bag on his shoulder. I went, ‘OK, guess he really wants to meet me, he just walked right past me.’ He knew Antonio [Banderas, her Zorro co-star] and Melanie [Griffith, Banderas’ wife at the time] for many years, and he joined us all for drinks and dinner. That night we found out we have the same birthday.”
And, famously, Douglas instructed Zeta-Jones—who was born on Sept. 25 simply as he was, solely 25 years later—proper then and there that he was going to be the daddy of her kids.
“And I went, ‘All right. I’ve read a lot about you. I’ve seen a lot about you. I heard a lot about you. Good night,'” she continued, “And I went to bed and got up at 5 a.m. I went to London, changed planes, went to Aberdeen, got on a ferry across to the Isle of Mull. And there was a big bouquet of flowers saying ‘I’m sorry if I scared you. Love, Michael Douglas.’ He always says whoever was the florist who got those flowers to the Isle of Mull saved his life. I will say if somebody says they’re going to father your children when you’ve just met them, it is a little scary. Unfortunately he was right, again.”
The truth is, Zeta-Jones told ET in 2016 that, whereas she could not pinpoint her favourite profession second, her all-time excessive was “giving birth to two of my kids, and him being the first one to hold them was pretty amazing.”
