Catherine Zeta-Jones and her husband Michael Douglas are 'so proud' after their daughter Carys prepares to make her professional stage debut, the Daily Mail can reveal. The 23-year-old will lead the cast in a production of Anton Chekhov's classic play The Seagull when the show opens next month in New York.
Carys will star as Nina, a fame-hungry aspiring actress who becomes entangled in a love triangle. This role has been portrayed previously by the likes of Saoirse Ronan, Emilia Clarke, Carey Mulligan, Natalie Portman, and a young Dame Helen Mirren.
A friend of Carys told the Daily Mail that her parents Catherine, 56, and Michael, 81, are 'so proud' of her latest achievement. The Welsh star has also made a public display of support by liking a poster of the play on Instagram. The production will have a limited one-week run at St Lydia's Theatre in Brooklyn.
Casting was announced by the production company Solid Flesh, the theatre group founded by Carys' friend Kieran Gettel-Gilmartin, who acted in the 2022 Netflix comedy film Metal Lords. 'Rounding out the incredible cast of The Seagull with our Irina Arkadina, Nina, and Konstantin!' the co-producers wrote on Instagram.
Carys, who graduated from Brown University last year with a degree in film and international relations, will star alongside fellow Brown graduate Sarah Yannic and Kieran. 'I grew up doing theatre, and I didn't study acting in school, but that's why I'm happy to be in such an informative arts space,' Carys told People magazine last year.
Catherine, who also shares son Dylan, 25, with her husband, has previously spoken about her children's passion for the arts. In 2021, she admitted: 'Michael and I would be the first parents to say, "You know, maybe you should think of another career," but we've seen how passionate they are about the craft.' She continued: 'They know what celebritydom is. They know the good, the bad, warts and all that. But their passion is about acting as a craft and they've done every theatre camp - my kids went off to summer camp every year, to theatre camp with the Broadway kids, and held their own very, very well, I have to say.'
Earlier this month, Carys also revealed she was producing a new play at 'one of Off-Broadway's leading theater houses', putting out an open call for script submissions on social media. That separate production is scheduled for mid-July, with rehearsals beginning next month.
Both Carys' Oscar-winning parents began their illustrious career on the stage before transitioning to film. Catherine was cast as one of the orphan girls in the original West End production of Annie at just nine years old, and became a national tap-dancing champion in her early teens. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Chicago in 2003 and a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in A Little Night Music in 2009. Michael studied acting at The American Place Theatre in New York City and got his start at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in the 1960s.
Written in 1895, The Seagull is one of Chekhov's most celebrated works, telling the story of a group of artists and their romantic entanglements at a Russian country estate. Carys' character, Nina, is a young woman desperate to escape her provincial life and become a famous actress. She becomes romantically involved with both Konstantin, a struggling writer, and the established novelist Trigorin, leading to tragic consequences.
The promising stage star has already racked up acting credits in the 2024 short films Shell and F**k That Guy, with the latter premiering at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival in Paris last June. While at Brown, she interned at Rolling Stone magazine, where she wrote five published articles on film and music, and at production company Ark Media, assisting on a documentary about Hollywood star Tatum O'Neal. She also studied for a year abroad at King's College London, focusing on International Relations and Affairs.
Her brother Dylan, who graduated from Brown in 2022, hosts a weekly Gen Z political radio program called Young American with Dylan Douglas and made his film debut in the psychological thriller I Will Come to You.
