This is a past article from eonline.com explaining why we mayl never know her real age.
From Ask The Answer Bitch
Is Catherine Zeta-Jones lying about her age? I've heard she is actually 10 years older than she says. Any truth to the rumor?
A.B. Replies: Right. This B!tch would need to fly to Wales, look up yearbooks, track down schoolmates and get them to confirm they took classes with the most litigious little harpy in show business, all just to see if she's really the lissome 34 she says she is. Not bloody likely.
Even the finest reporters at some of the nation's top entertainment glossies find age verification maddening. If the age a celebrity provides matches the number most often seen in other recent articles, that's usually enough for an overworked magazine fact-checker. Therefore, if a celebrity lies early and often about age, very few reporters have the time or resources to check it out any further.
"Sometimes publications will pull someone's DMV records, if there's reason to believe a celebrity is lying," says one reporter at a top entertainment news outlet. "But checking out ages is always a headache. Publicists will often order you, 'Don't put that age in there.' "
DMV is the state's Department of Motor Vehicles, see. Pull someone's records, the theory goes, and find a person's correct age.
"If you lie on those documents, that's a crime, right?" reasons our reporter.
Right. No one who stars in a TV show or a movie--especially such quality fare as the Naked Gun series or Baretta--would ever commit a crime against the people of California.
Sometimes the record-pulling has the desired effect. Last week, a few journalists spontaneously combusted, out of pure joy, after claiming to have unearthed voting records and other documents that place
Ashton Kutcher at 30, not the 26 he claims to be. (Of course, he still insists he's just a wee 26-year-old man-child.)
Then again, sometimes even a fat stack of documents is no defense against a raging star and her publicity machine. Take
Salma Hayek. Several years ago, she was set to be profiled by a large magazine that shall remain nameless, so a reporter at the mag pulled a public record to fact-check Hayek's age. When Hayek's publicist saw an early copy of the article, she went en fuego, insisting the age reported was three or four years too high.
"This publicist was panicked, really panicked," an editor involved in the headache recalls. "We said, 'Well, show us a driver's license or a birth certificate or something to prove our reporting is wrong.' She wouldn't. We let her off the hook anyway, and pulled Salma's age altogether."
So. If Salmita is really four years older than she claims to be (on, say, E! Online and IMDb), that makes her--yes--over 40.
Still, manager and publicist Jo-Ann Geffen, who represents the disturbingly taut David Cassidy, says even state law doesn't stop most stars, especially women, from shaving an average of four years off their age.
"I once worked with a pair of sisters who were both pretty prominent actresses at one time," Geffen dishes. "Not only were the girls lying about their age, but their mother did, too. If the mother hadn't, it would have looked bizarre."
An agent, publicist or manager will instruct an actor to lie about age early in a career, and the new number simply becomes a "fact." And it's not like you're gonna pay me or some other reporter for the extra hours it would take to confirm Zeta-Jones' real age.
"I really don't think the public cares that much," says Geffen.
She wasn't that wrinkled. So fake!
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