“At least she being honest about it and aint told no lie. Can't do anything but respect her.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones is enjoying her life as an empty nester — despite what her husband once said.
The 55-year-old “Wednesday” actress appeared on the Sept. 4 episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” where she opened up about how her kids “are not kids anymore.”
“They’re grown up,” she said of her son Dylan, 25, and daughter Carys, 22, whom she shares with husband Michael Douglas.
Zeta-Jones then joked about how her two kids “used to go to the sand pit and beach” while visiting their grandparents in Wales — a trip they would take without their parents each summer.
“But now they go to the pub,” she added. “Now, they go off to the karaoke.”
The actress, who has been married to Douglas since 2000, according to Us Weekly, said that both of her kids have since moved out of their family home as the couple embark on their empty nest era.
While she said most people have a “Dame Doom” mentality with empty nest life, she doesn’t agree.
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“Oh, it’s like, ‘You’re gonna look at your husband and go, remember me?’” she said of how everyone perceives the change.
“Michael and I are having a great time,” she said of empty nesting.
“And the coolest thing is our kids, who are now 25 and 23, like to hang with us. And that’s the best,” she added. “But if I was a kid, I’d want to hang with Michael Douglas too.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones’ husband had a different opinion on empty nesting
According to the Better Health Channel, empty nest syndrome “refers to the grief that many parents feel when their children move out of the home.”
Common symptoms of an empty nester include redundancy, fear, grief, sadness, guilt, stress, loneliness, irritability, emptiness and powerlessness, per the Cleveland Clinic.
While Zeta-Jones’ take on empty nesting doesn’t quite fit that description, her husband wasn’t sure how they would handle it four years ago.
In a 2021 interview on the “Today” show, Douglas described the couple’s new era as empty nesters as “scary.”
"It's scary. It really is," Douglas admitted. "You look at each other and go, 'Well, it's just you and me babe.’”
At the time, Carys had just graduated high school — and their empty nest era had just begun.
"You forget how many conversations you sort of hide behind in terms of talking about your kids and what's going on next and this and that, and then one day you just look at each other,” he told “Today.”
“We're 20 years now, so all those good years of paying attention to each other are paying off now," he added.
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones first met in 1998, according to People — three years after he split from his first wife Diandra Luker, whom he shares a 46-year-old son, Cameron, with.
The couple, who have now been married for more than two decades, got engaged in 1999 and tied the knot in November 2000 (after his divorce was finalized).
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They welcomed their son Dylan three months before the wedding, followed by their daughter Carys in April 2003.
