FOR ZETA-JONES, SO FAR, SO GOOD; HER CAREER IN U.S. ANYTHING BUT A HORROR STORY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

All is going according to plan for Catherine Zeta-Jones. The remarkable thing is, everyone who comes to Hollywood has the same sort of plan, but very few get it to work.

``It really has turned around exactly the way I had wanted it to,'' says the darkly exotic, 29-year-old Welsh actress, who gave up an impressive stage and television career in Britain to start from scratch in America several years ago. ``I mean, I could have completely disappeared off the face of the earth, like many people have.

``But if I am satisfied that I came 6,000 miles to do something, the most satisfaction comes from the American public and the people who make decisions having accepted me as one of them. That may sound ridiculous, but it was very important for me to break into that mainstream and convince the public that I could play something besides the next Spanish or Welsh role.''

Indeed, Zeta-Jones' eye-popping work as a sword-swinging aristocrat in ``The Mask of Zorro'' last summer could have been a flash in the pan. But a successful co-starring stint opposite Sean Connery in this spring's romantic thriller ``Entrapment'' widened her public profile and professional appeal.

Now she's building on that platform with a juicy bit in the big-budget horror movie ``The Haunting,'' as part of an ensemble that also features Liam Neeson (``Schindler's List,'' ``Star Wars: Episode I -The Phantom Menace''), Owen Wilson (``Armageddon,'' ``Bottle Rocket'') and indie film queen Lili Taylor (``The Imposters,'' ``I Shot Andy Warhol'').

Although it's a horror film (the actress's first), it's also a nice showcase for Zeta-Jones' naturally fun and warm qualities, as well as her remarkable physical attributes.

``She's an emotional person, really big-hearted and generous,'' says ``Haunting'' co-producer Donna Arkoff Roth. ``Those qualities are very easy to see in her. She's very open, and that makes people like her, not feel like they'd be excluded by her. And you want to know that's true about a woman who is so stunningly beautiful.''

Based on Shirley Jackson's popular novel ``The Haunting of Hill House,'' the movie places three disturbed people in a haunted New England mansion. They think they're there for a study on sleep disorders, but their psychiatrist (Neeson) is secretly subjecting them to fear response stimuli. Little does he know that the house is possessed by stimuli he never dreamed of.

Zeta-Jones plays the sensuous, free-spirited New York designer Theo. Like the character played by Claire Bloom in Robert Wise's subtly spooky, 1963 film ``The Haunting,'' Theo is a bisexual, an aspect of her personality director Jan De Bont initially tried to play up, but, through last-minute reshoots and editing, dropped in order to secure a family-friendly, PG-13 rating for the $70 million fright fest.

Much as she wants to be accepted by Middle America, Zeta-Jones admits she would have preferred keeping the gay angle in the movie.

``I'd be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed because I wanted to pursue that avenue as an actor,'' says Zeta-Jones, who speaks with a likable candidness despite having suffered microscopic coverage by the rabid British tabloid press and, more recently, a small media frenzy when her relationship with actor Michael Douglas was revealed. ``But for me to scream and shout about it is unproductive. It's a different kind of movie, and that bit was not pivotal to the plot.''

What was essential was responding to elaborately scary special effects that were added to the film in post-production, an extended, painstaking process that many American actors are familiar with but was a totally new experience for a stage-trained performer such as Zeta-Jones.

``It's a different discipline of work, a different technique of acting,'' she confirms. ``Jan presses a button and you react like there's going to be something there.

``The challenge for me was retaining a thought for one scene that could take you three weeks to shoot. Not back-to-back, but a bit of it one day, a bit of it in two weeks' time, and then the reverses with the technical stuff. To retain that thought and maintain the level of whatever - fear, anger - that was something that I learned from this. That was difficult but very good, and I did learn a lot from it.

``Would I do another one tomorrow?'' she says of high-tech genre films. ``I don't know, I might. There's so much technical stuff that goes on in filmmaking, and, I think, for years I thought that I wasn't going to succeed in this medium because I didn't get that whole process: the different lenses, hitting your mark, the light. The idea of furthering that just adds more to the whole technical rat race.''

The lavishly detailed sets art director Eugenio Zanetti (``Restoration,'' ``What Dreams May Come'') created for the haunted house interior were so massive that they made Zeta-Jones feel, not like a rat in a race, but a tiny little mouse. Built in the old Spruce Goose hangar in Long Beach and in Raleigh Studios' new Manhattan Beach facility, the massive rooms featured not only people-dwarfing furniture, mantelpieces and statuary, but state-of-the-art hydraulic systems that brought entire ceilings and spiked bed canopies to alarming life.

``When I first walked on the set down in Long Beach, I really felt like a miniature, like a little ant,'' Zeta-Jones recalls. ``And I was awestruck when I walked into my bedroom at the Manhattan Beach studios. After a while, I got really friendly with Eugenio. And when I bought a house, Eugenio said, `Darling, don't worry. I will help you decorate!'

``When my mother visited the set, I told her Eugenio was going to give me ideas. I could see her looking around and thinking, `I'll never stay there alone!' ''

Her dad, too, was a little spooked by the set visit. The first ``Haunting'' had scared the wits out of him as a child. For the most part, though, Zeta-Jones' non-show-biz parents - who indulged their daughter's dancing and acting dreams for years before she left Swansea for London while still in her teens (and quickly landed a starring role in a ``42nd Street'' revival) - are digging Catherine's international celebrity.

``I was in Cannes promoting `Entrapment,' and I was so tired from hours and hours of back-to-back interviews,'' she explains. ``That night was `The Spy Who Shagged Me' party, and I think the whole south of France was invited. I couldn't make it; I fell asleep in my room at 7 o'clock, but my parents were partying till 4.

``Now, when did that transition happen? Aren't the parents supposed to go to bed early while the kid stays out all night? My mother was like - with sunglasses on - `Great party. You missed it.' OK, Mum, I'll just do my work. So funny.''

Actually, Zeta-Jones finally took a month of serious relaxation time for herself this spring.

``It was the first holiday in years and years and years that I was able to turn off and relax like I've never done before,'' she says. ``Because, I think, there was an inner sense of the turnaround that I made actually working. I was able to completely chill and say to people, `You won't be able to contact me for a month.' Didn't pick up the phone, didn't even check my messages.

``Of course, I lost loads of friends in the meantime,'' she says with a hearty laugh. ``They think, `That bitch! She won't return my calls since she got so successful!' The reality is, I didn't want to speak to anybody.''

Well, not everybody. Zeta-Jones spent much of her vacation with Douglas in the Spanish Mediterranean, where enterprising paparazzi photos made their low-key relationship public. Intrusive as that was, she reports that the press coverage has been relatively mild compared to the sensationalistic frenzy that helped drive her out of Britain. A couple of semi-nude, long-lens pictures and questions about their age difference (Douglas, who's been separated from his wife for several years, turns 55 on Sept. 25 - the same day Zeta-Jones hits 30) are nothing compared to tab reporters rifling her garbage and chasing her car at high speeds.

``The best thing is that we're great friends,'' she says. ``Regardless of any age difference - and I've never, ever read anywhere that you have to be a certain age to get along and have fun with anybody else - we're basically just having a great time. We're born on the same day and it's kind of bizarre how similar our heads are tuned in. We're having a great laugh together and, finally, have been able to spend some real time with each other. So far, so good.''

And, in general, so far so good in the U.S. media, which seems more interested in describing Zeta-Jones' beauty than prying into her personal life. But the actress, once again displaying a kind of everywoman likability, refuses to let that affect her, either.

``Well, it's better than being told you look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame,'' she cracks. ``I've been glorified before, then nightmarishly slagged off. At this point in my life I realize, and I accept, that whatever people write now ain't gonna be what they write later. Maybe it will be, I dunno, but really - and I'm not saying this to fish for compliments - I do not believe I'm that aesthetically beautiful. Take every piece, and I'm not.

``The world is full of beautiful women. But I know what I do have is a talent, and I want to be here for the long run. I'm not obsessed with myself, and I try not to rely on any kind of beauty. That's why I try to put a certain oomph into my performances, some fun and physicality. And right now; I'm not going to be cast as a wallflower anytime soon, but I can do it and someday I'd like to try.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Fearless

Catherine Zeta-Jones takes up residence in horror flick `The Haunting'

(2) Catherine Zeta-Jones: ``If I am satisfied that I came 6,000 miles to do something, the most satisfaction comes from the American public and the people who make decisions having accepted me as one of them.''

(3) ``It's a different discipline of work, a different technique of acting,'' says Zeta-Jones of her role in ``The Haunting.''