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Zeta-Jones 'driven to brink' by stalker Oscar-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones was driven to the brink of a nervous breakdown by death threats in letters and phone calls apparently sent by an obsessed fan, her husband, Michael Douglas, told a court Wednesday.
Testifying at a preliminary hearing to determine whether Dawnette Knight, 32, should stand trial on charges of threatening and stalking Zeta-Jones for about 18 months, Douglas said the threats made his wife terrified and hysterical. "She was hysterical...hysterical. She was fainting. She could not get any air. She showed all the signs of having a nervous breakdown," the actor said during an appearance as a prosecution witness. Knight, an aspiring child psychologist, is charged with 25 counts of stalking and making criminal threats against Zeta-Jones, 34, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress as a murderous showgirl in "Chicago." Prosecutors said Knight made the threats because she was obsessed with Douglas and wrote letters to friends and relatives of the actor and his wife declaring that she wanted to kill Zeta-Jones so she could be with Douglas. Among those who received letters was Douglas’s 87-year-old father, actor Kirk Douglas. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg will determine at the end of the preliminary hearing whether Knight should be sent for trial. Zeta-Jones is expected to testify on Wednesday afternoon. Douglas, 59, said the letters Knight sent contained personal details, such as a description of a hallway in one of the homes the couple own. He added that at one point three threatening phone calls were made over two days to an Amsterdam hotel where Zeta-Jones was staying in May for the filming of the movie "Oceans 12." "I'm here because of death threats upon my wife," Douglas said as he began testifying. He said that at first he declined to tell his wife of the threats because he was afraid of upsetting her. But police insisted and Zeta-Jones was stunned and upset. She began to worry that they were written by someone who knew her and things reached a head after the calls to the Amsterdam hotel. "She just felt that she was a marked person, (she) couldn't understand how they knew where she was," he said. It was then that she began progressively showing physical signs that Douglas thought were of a nervous breakdown. He said she flew from Amsterdam to Spain where he was and he immediately took her to a doctor. When she learned of Knight's arrest, Douglas said his wife broke down in tears of relief and happiness. Douglas said he never recalled meeting Knight until a golf tournament in Las Vegas where he saw her walking directly toward him. "She was hyper-ventilating a little bit and her behavior was a bit strange. She was wiggling," Douglas said. He only connected her to the golf tournament when police showed him a photograph of Knight, who has since written a letter apologizing to the couple and saying she would never have harmed anyone. Knight's lawyer, Richard Herman, asked Douglas if he knew that female stalkers were seldom violent and generally not dangerous.
People in the packed court burst into laughter and Douglas gave a wry smile at the mention of one of his best known films, about a woman murderously obsessed with a married man.
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At that point, prosecutor Debra Archulta said, "Isn't that the premise of a
movie called 'Fatal Attraction?'"
