CATHERINE ZETA-JONES WINS TONY AWARD

Actors Catherine Zeta-Jones and Douglas Hodge, and playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn won Tony Awards in New York on a strong night for British talent.

Zeta-Jones, 40, won best actress in a musical for A Little Night Music while Hodge, also 40, won the equivalent actor award for La Cage Aux Folles.

Sir Alan, 71, meanwhile, won a lifetime achievement award.

Denzel Washington and Scarlett Johansson were also among winners in the Broadway awards.

Amorous actress
John Logan's Red – a two-man drama about artist Mark Rothko starring British actor Alfred Molina – came out on top with six awards, including best play and best director for Michael Grandage.

Red's Eddie Redmayne won best supporting actor in a play but Molina lost out on the best actor prize to Washington, who won for his performance in the revival of August Wilson drama Fences.

Fellow Briton Jude Law had also been nominated for his Broadway performances of Hamlet.

Oscar-winner Washington, 55, who plays a sanitation man who missed out on becoming a baseball star, said: “My mother always says, 'Man gives the award, God gives the reward'.

“I guess I got both tonight.”
Zeta-Jones, who won for her role as amorous actress Desiree Armfeldt in the revival of 1973 musical A Little Night Music, thanked her colleagues and actor husband Michael Douglas who she said she “gets to sleep with every night”.

“I really do feel like Cinderella,” she said.