Saturday January 29 7:37 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Four weeks after they were engaged to be married, Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and Hollywood star Michael Douglas announced Friday that she is pregnant by him.
``Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are pleased to announce they are expecting a child,'' the couple said in a brief statement released by her publicist in Los Angeles. ``It will be the first child for Ms. Zeta-Jones. Mr. Douglas has a son, Cameron, from a previous marriage.''
News that the raven-haired beauty was expecting first surfaced on Friday in Britain's top-selling tabloid, The Sun, which reported she was three months pregnant and that bouts of morning sickness had forced her to withdraw as a presenter at Sunday's Golden Globe awards in Beverly Hills.
In an interview to air Monday on the syndicated television show ``Access Hollywood,'' Douglas said he and his fiancee had not originally intended to reveal her pregnancy so soon.
``The tabloids kind of moved it along ... so we decided if it comes up now fine, we're both really happy about it. ... It's great, really wonderful. I'm not handing out cigars yet, though.''
A source close to Zeta-Jones told The Sun the pregnancy was unplanned but that the couple was delighted and that the actress had broken the news to her parents in a phone call last week.
``Catherine has always said she wants to start a family. And she knows Michael is the man for her,'' the source was cited as saying.
Zeta-Jones, 30, and Douglas, 55, announced Jan. 6 that they had become engaged on New Year's Eve, with the actor-producer proposing to the actress at his holiday home in the posh ski resort of Aspen, Colo.
No date or place for the wedding has been set. But The Sun reported the couple are considering tying the knot on their shared birthday, Sept. 25, and that Douglas' estate on the Spanish island of Majorca tops the list of possible locales.
The pair has reportedly ruled out Zeta-Jones' preferred site, a small church in her native Wales, after deciding the chapel was too small to host the number of guests they had planned to invite.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones met at the Deauville Film Festival in France in August 1998 and began dating in March 1999.
Lawyers for Douglas and Zeta-Jones, who starred opposite Sean Connery in last year's crime thriller ``Entrapment,'' are reportedly working out the details of a prenuptial agreement.
Douglas, who starred in such films as ``Basic Instinct,'' ''Falling Down,'' ``The American President'' and ``The Game,'' was married 18 years to his first wife, Diandra, with whom he had his son, Cameron, 21.