Catherine Zeta-Jones Says Michael Douglas Is the ‘Best Travel Agent in the World’—Here’s How They Plan Trips (Exclusive)

Rachel ChangSat, October 3, 2026 at 2:30 PM UTC

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From left: Catherine Zeta-Jones at Netflix’s “Wednesday” FYC Event; a still from Kill Jackie.Credit: From left: JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images; Unai Mateo/AMC Global Media

Catherine Zeta-Jones is more than a bona fide movie star—she’s a tried-and-true world traveler. That includes adventures all across South America, Africa, and Asia—and now she officially calls herself a “sevener,” having checked off her final continent with a trip to Antarctica this past January.

“It’s very important to get out into the world and appreciate it,” the 57-year-old Oscar winner told Travel + Leisure. “My favorite thing to do is travel.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones visiting Antarctica as her seventh continent.Credit: Catherine Zeta-Jones

One of her most memorable trips was to Argentina, where she combined work and play. “I’ve done press junkets in Buenos Aires where I didn’t sleep for four days,” she reminisced. “I ate half a cow because they have the best Argentine beef and then watched tango all night long. Then I closed my eyes for two hours, did hair and makeup, then did interviews, half a cow, tango, and repeat for three days.”

When it comes to travel planning, she has a major built-in perk: “My husband is probably the best travel agent in the world,” she said of Michael Douglas, whom she’s been married to since 2000. “He loves to do all that research. He buys the magazines—your magazine—looks through it, rips out pages, and keeps that, and he’s put on some great trips.”

Those trips are often a family affair, though her kids Dylan, 26, and Carys, 23, still need to visit Australia to match their “sevener” parents. “My daughter always keeps a travel journal,” she said. “I wish that I had done that. She speaks into her phone. ‘We’re at this restaurant. We had this and that,’ and then she puts it into her Moleskine book that she writes in.”

Through their globetrotting, she and Douglas have aimed to instill in their children a more empathetic view of the world. “My kids have been very lucky that they’ve traveled a lot with us, and they realize the importance of travel because it relates to the importance of history,” she said. “History is something that we need to remember and to cherish—and sometimes not repeat.”

She emphasizes the importance of experiencing international cultures, languages, and foods for a well-rounded perspective: “Even the way people dance is different. You go to Germany, they dance one way, and you go to Spain, they dance another.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Best trick for getting over jet lag?First of all, loads of water. Then I always try to sleep on the plane. But age is not good for jet lag. When I was in my teens or my early 20s, I could fly all over the world, get up, shoot, press junkets, go on a TV show, head back to LA, shoot. I don’t do that anymore.

Favorite hotel? Oh, there are many, but the Royal Mansour in Marrakesh is one of my faves—not just because of its beauty, but because I love Morocco. I did my very first movie with a French film director (Les 1001 Nuits in 1990) and a wonderful cast. I have such great memories, and I’ve gone back to Morocco many times!

What’s your packing style?I have a packing phobia, which means everything has to go in the end. I start a few days before with my little baggies with the things written on top that are essentials. And as the days before the trip come, I start thinking, ‘What if I need that?’ The most essential is my eye mask, one of those big puffy ones. I’m a bit of an old granny when it comes to walking around anywhere, so I also have my house slippers. I pack everything except the kitchen sink—it’s a ridiculous amount. My husband says, ‘How many of those jeans did you wear in the end?’

Favorite filming location? I’ve been all over the world filming, but one was when I was in Thailand. It wasn’t a great movie, but I was on ‘weather cover,’ which means if snow or a blizzard comes—something that’s never happened in the country—you’ll be shooting. But if not, we’re going to do you last. So I played golf, went to the beach, went on the boats out to the beautiful islands, read buckets of books—then did one scene and came home.

Character you’ve played who would make the best travel companion?

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Maybe No Reservations when I played Chef Kate. I’m not really a foodie, but I always want someone to do the due diligence and tell me what the best place is to go!

Of course, there’s one destination that holds special meaning for Zeta-Jones: her home country, Wales. “People miss traveling to Wales, and as a Welsh person, there’s a part of us that loves that we don’t have a lot of people coming—and then there’s a part of us that goes, ‘Huh, it’s yet undiscovered,’” she said. She pointed out most people tend to opt for other destinations in the U.K., choosing spots like the Cotswolds, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. “But they don’t come to Wales a lot—I’m very proud to be Welsh, and we have a beautiful country.”

So for her new eight-episode AMC+ thriller Kill Jackie, which premiered Oct. 2 with new episodes dropping weekly, she had the extraordinary opportunity to shine a spotlight not just on her home country, but her hometown of Swansea.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Jackie Price outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.Credit: Unai Mateo/AMC Global Media

“We open in Mumbles with a lorry—you say truck—going across the coast, and that’s where I was brought up,” she said. “I wanted to show the beauty of it—we see some of it going through the lanes, and then our storyline is the grittier side of Swansea. We don’t necessarily show the wealth of its beauty in Kill Jackie, but I think it’s beautiful.”

The production also filmed on location in a pair of Spanish cities. “For your foodie readers, Bilbao and San Sebastián are musts,” she said, admitting that many restaurants require reservations months in advance. “I only got in because I’m in the movie industry and I was shooting there, and they felt sorry for me.”

But the experiences far exceeded her expectations. “It’s a level of cuisine that you can’t imagine—it’s a science,” Zeta-Jones raved. “You’ve got to be there for four hours because there are so many courses.” That said, she found incredible food all across the region. “You can eat well for all prices. You can go to the street market, and they’ve got great things—I loved it.”

Beyond the culinary discoveries, she also spent time taking in all the corners of the cities, calling San Sebastián “precious,” with “surrounding areas that are just magic,” while Bilbao was more “industrial,” though she loved its most famous attraction. “What Frank Gehry did with the Guggenheim Museum, it’s a piece of art like no other,” she mused. “I go to cities to see architecture more than I go to beaches to lie in the sand. It’s magic the way the light hits it at a certain hour.”

The stunning backdrop set the scene for what’s surely one of her most personal projects yet—a bit ironic, considering the series is based on the Nick Harkaway book The Price You Pay, which he wrote under the pseudonym Aidan Truhen, about a cocaine dealer who gets wrapped up in an international crime ring.

“When I read the book, which I loved, I was like, ‘Hmm, I don’t see anything in this for me,’” she admitted telling her producer after reading 300 pages. That’s when she realized they were flipping the lead to be a woman.

“That makes it really interesting for me,” she said of the gender swap. “Then we went through a different connotation of making that change; playing a woman in a man’s world was kind of cliché, but it was interesting with the quirkiness and the danger.”

But then there was one big factor that really drove it home. “When I decided that I want to play a Welsh—not only Welsh [but] from my hometown, from Swansea—it really got the creative juices going,” she said. It also offered the rare instance where she got to showcase her local dialect on screen.

“Even though I don’t know Jackie Price in the drug world or the dodgy, tax-avoiding, laundering art world, I know Jackie Price because I know women,” Zeta-Jones said. “Putting this on the screen was wonderful because certain things came up along the way, even with the writing, where I’d say, ‘In Wales, we wouldn’t beat around the bush like that—we’d just like to say it as it is, no filter.’ So all those little nuances were really fun.”

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