Actor Michael Douglas is criticizing the British press for its treatment of his wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, during the couple’s court case against the magazine tabloid Hello!, Reuters reports.
The Hollywood couple recently won their legal against Hello! magazine, which published unauthorized pictures of their wedding, although the amount of damages has yet to be decided. Douglas and his Zeta-Jones were married in a lavish ceremony in Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel in the fall of 2000 and had sold the exclusive rights to their wedding pictures to rival publication, OK! magazine.
During the trial, the Welsh actress was widely criticized and mocked by the British press because of her posh lifestyle and her attitude toward money after saying in court that a million pounds might be a lot to some people “but not to us.”
A headline above one of the unauthorized photos showing Zeta-Jones eating wedding cake read, “Catherine Eater-Jones.”
Douglas told OK! he felt angry on behalf of his wife. “This is her home country and there was an element of disrespect in the coverage which disturbed me,” he said.
“To see the potshots that have been taken at her–for whatever reason–by her own country kind of amazes me,” Douglas continued. “I don’t think it’s particularly focused on her, but it’s the whole issue of cutting down people who succeed.
“She is such a tremendous spokesperson for Britain in general, and Wales in particular, that it hurt to see how she was treated in this whole process,” Douglas added.
Earlier this month, Zeta-Jones and Douglas topped a British poll of the celebrities who most deserve their comeuppance. The couple received nearly a quarter of the 500 votes in a poll to taken by the makers of a new PlayStation 2 revenge video game to mark the U.K.’s National Revenge Week.
