Catherine Zeta Jones Makes An Appearance On NBC Today

Catherine Zeta Jones made an appearance on NBC Today this morning with her co-star Aaron Eckhart. She kept busy making pies and faces only a mother could love On the show she talked about her experience starring in No Reservations as a chef.

“I don’t cook. I pass the kitchen, but just to get to the other room.”

On preparing for the role by spending two weeks in a real restaurant, an environment she has never worked in before:

“It was like going to school for the first day when I arrived in that kitchen,” she said, also calling the experience, “terrifying.”

On waiting tables:

“It was a very interesting lesson how people don’t make eye contact sometimes with the server. It took a while until somebody said to me, “Has anyone ever told you you look like that actress, Catherine Zeta-Jones?’” She would respond, “”Yeah, I get that all the time.”

On similarities with her character:

“I can equate some of her characteristics. Not that I’m as completely compulsive and a perfectionist the way she is in the kitchen. Her life revolves around the kitchen and she’s a perfectionist and she’s in control in the kitchen. [But] when I was single without any kids, I used to do that with my career in a way. Not to the extent my character does in the movie. But I did nothing else. If somebody said, “Do you want to go to China? There’s a movie.’ I’d say, “What flight? Pack my bag.’ “

On finding a new appreciation for cooks and kitchens:

“I was there in a working kitchen. It just fascinated me how everything moved so beautifully and fluidly. If you took the sound out, the clanking of the pans and the sizzling of the pans, it was like a ballet – ” the way they moved, no one was bumping into each other.”

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