Cameron Diaz

• 1. Introduction

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  Cameron Diaz had never acted a day in her life when she auditioned for The Mask at the age of 21. The part was Tina Carlyle, a jazz singer, and she won it. Only after the casting did she begin taking acting lessons. Diaz was born in 1972, and the films she has appeared in have grossed more than 3 billion dollars at the U.S. box office. In 2013 she was named the highest-paid actress over 40. How does a newcomer with no training reach that position? What did she do with her fame once she had it? And why did she walk away from acting after 2014?

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• 2. Long Beach Origins

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  Cameron Michelle Diaz was born in San Diego on the 30th of August 1972. Her mother, Billie, worked as an import/export agent. Her father, Emilio, was a foreman at the California oil company Unocal. She has an elder sister named Chimene. Her father's family is Cuban, descended from people who had emigrated from Spain to Cuba. Diaz has said her direct Spanish ancestors came from Cádiz. They later settled in Ybor City, in Tampa, Florida, before moving to the Los Angeles area, where her father was born. Her mother's ancestry is mostly English and German.

  Diaz grew up in Long Beach. She attended Los Cerritos Elementary School and then Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where Snoop Dogg was a schoolmate. She remembered a frugal childhood. In her words: "We weren't privileged, very much the opposite. My family would collect soda cans to turn in for extra money, because $20 meant something to us. But we were very happy."

  At 16, while still in high school, she signed a modeling contract with Elite Model Management. She appeared in advertisements for Calvin Klein and Levi's. At 17 she was on the cover of the July 1990 issue of Seventeen magazine. She also spent two to three months modeling in Australia and shot a Coca-Cola commercial in Sydney in 1991. Another assignment, an LA Gear advertisement filmed in Japan, introduced her to the video producer Carlos de la Torre. The two lived together from 1990 to 1994.

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• 3. Rise To Fame

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  The Mask finished 1994 among the ten highest-grossing films of the year, and it established Diaz as a sex symbol. She owed the audition to an agent at Elite, who met the producers while they searched for their lead actress and recommended her.

  Her next choices were far from mainstream. In The Last Supper, from 1995, she played one of several liberal graduate students who invite extremist conservatives to dinner in order to kill them. Roger Ebert called the film "a brave effort in a timid time." In 1996 she played an ex-stripper in Feeling Minnesota, with Keanu Reeves, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Courtney Love. Emanuel Levy of Variety found little to admire in the film except Diaz, whom he thought well cast as a sexual aggressor and romantic manipulator. The same year she appeared opposite Jennifer Aniston in She's the One, directed by Edward Burns. She also starred in the crime comedy Head Above Water, as an unfaithful wife implicated in her ex-lover's murder.

  She was once scheduled to appear in Mortal Kombat. She broke her hand while training for the role and had to withdraw.

  In 1997 she returned to the mainstream with My Best Friend's Wedding, playing the wealthy fiancée of a sportswriter who is a long-time friend of the character played by Julia Roberts. The film was a global hit and is considered one of the best romantic comedies of all time. She had also starred that year in the little-seen A Life Less Ordinary.

  Then came There's Something About Mary in 1998, in which Diaz played the title role, a woman in Miami with several men competing for her affection. The Austin Chronicle remarked that she exuded the irresistible something promised by the title. The sleeper hit earned 176 million dollars in the United States and 369 million worldwide. It was the highest-grossing comedy of 1998 in North America and the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year. It brought her first Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. That same year she made Very Bad Things, a comedy that critics panned. Her next two projects would test whether she could do more than comedy.

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• 4. The Dramatic Turn

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  Spike Jonze chose Diaz for his directorial debut, Being John Malkovich, in 1999. She played the pet-obsessed wife of an unemployed puppeteer who finds a portal into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. Critics gave the film widespread acclaim, and it became an arthouse success. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called her turn hilarious. Roger Ebert noted that she looked so dowdy that audiences barely recognized her, and he felt she had taken her talent somewhere strange and made it work. She earned Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the SAG Awards. She was passed over for the Oscar, and that omission drew backlash.

  Her other 1999 film was Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday. Al Pacino played the veteran coach Tony D'Amato, who has lost favor with Christina Pagniacci, the young woman who owns the team. Diaz played Pagniacci. Critics were divided, but the film made 100 million dollars worldwide.

  In 2001 she appeared in the independent drama The Invisible Circus, which premiered at Sundance. She played a young woman who dies by suicide in Europe in the 1970s. Later that year came Vanilla Sky, in which she played the former lover of a vain publishing magnate, played by Tom Cruise. The Los Angeles Times called her compelling as the embodiment of crazed sensuality. The San Francisco Chronicle thought her stalker both heartbreaking and terrifying. She earned Best Supporting Actress nominations from the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the American Film Institute Awards.

  Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York followed in 2002. It was set in the Five Points district of New York City in the mid-19th century. Diaz played a pickpocket and grifter who becomes the love interest of Leonardo DiCaprio's character. The film earned 193 million dollars worldwide. Critics agreed that Daniel Day-Lewis overshadowed his co-stars. A. O. Scott of The New York Times argued that her role was more a device for male jealousy than a fully imagined woman.

  In 2016, IndieWire listed Diaz among the greatest actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

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• 5. Angels And Ogres

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  In 2000, Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu played a trio of investigators in the film adaptation of Charlie's Angels, set in Los Angeles. It grossed 264.1 million dollars and ranked among the highest-grossing films of its year. She returned for the sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, in 2003.

  The voice of Princess Fiona in 2001's Shrek gave her a second franchise. Fiona is cursed to turn into an ogress at every sunset. She spends years locked in a dragon-guarded castle until the title character rescues her, and she falls in love with him. Shrek grossed 484.4 million dollars worldwide and became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. She reprised the role in Shrek 2 in 2004.

  The third film arrived in 2007, with Justin Timberlake in a supporting role. Critics were mixed, yet Shrek the Third grossed 798 million dollars worldwide. The same year she voiced Fiona in a thirty-minute Christmas special, Shrek the Halls, directed by Gary Trousdale. For the year ending in June 2008, her earnings from the Shrek sequel and What Happens in Vegas were estimated at 50 million dollars.

  Shrek Forever After came out in 2010. Reviews were mixed, but it grossed more than 752 million dollars and was the fifth top-grossing film of that year. A thirty-minute Halloween special, Scared Shrekless, came out in the same year. Fiona is not finished. Diaz is set to voice her again in Shrek 5, scheduled for release in 2027.

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• 6. Reviews Versus Receipts

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  In 2010, Forbes ranked Diaz as the richest female celebrity, at number 60 among the wealthiest 100. Her films that decade showed a gap between what critics said and what audiences paid for.

  In Her Shoes, from 2005, was based on Jennifer Weiner's novel about two sisters and their grandmother. Diaz played a dyslexic wild child in a love-hate struggle with her sensible sister, played by Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine played the grandmother. USA Today called it her best work at the time. In 2006, Nancy Meyers cast her in The Holiday with Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black. Her character, Amanda, is an American movie trailer producer who swaps homes with a British woman. It grossed more than 205 million dollars worldwide.

  What Happens in Vegas, from 2008, paired her with Ashton Kutcher as strangers who wake up married after winning a jackpot with the other's quarter. Reviews were negative. It still earned 219 million dollars against a budget of 35 million.

  In 2009 she made My Sister's Keeper, based on Jodi Picoult's novel, as a mother of three whose child is dying of leukemia. It grossed 95 million dollars. That year's The Box, written and directed by Richard Kelly, is set in 1976. A mysterious man offers a couple one million dollars to press a button, knowing that someone will die. It earned back its budget but was a financial disappointment.

  Knight and Day, from 2010, reunited her with Tom Cruise. It opened poorly but became a sleeper hit with 262 million dollars worldwide. In 2011 she played the journalist Lenore Case in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet, which earned 228 million dollars despite mixed to negative reviews. That year she also played a foul-mouthed Chicago-area middle school teacher in Bad Teacher, opposite Timberlake and Jason Segel. Critics liked her brazen performance more than the film, but it grossed 216 million dollars.

  Her 2012 releases did poorly. Gambit, with a script by Joel and Ethan Coen, made only 10 million dollars internationally. What to Expect When You're Expecting, in which she filmed her scenes over two weeks, earned 84.4 million. She also voiced Sigmund Freud in the animated A Liar's Autobiography, a deliberately inaccurate portrait of Graham Chapman. Her only 2013 film was Ridley Scott's The Counselor, in which she played a pathological liar and sociopath. The film was received badly, though her performance was praised.

  In 2014 she made three comedies. The Other Woman opened at number one with 24.7 million dollars over its first weekend and reached 196.7 million worldwide. Sex Tape, with Segel as a married couple searching for a lost recording, grossed 126 million. On nudity, she said she was not opposed "as long as it's part of the story." The last was Annie, in which she played the cruel Miss Colleen Hannigan, and it made 133 million dollars. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that she "overacts the role to the point of hysteria." It would be her last film for a decade.

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• 7. Under The Spotlight

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  On a publicity visit for Charlie's Angels, Diaz wore a T-shirt reading "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" She was critical of the George W. Bush administration. She has also worked with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the first and largest non-profit for veterans of those wars, and has spoken up for military families.

  Her private life drew steady attention. In May 2005, the National Enquirer's website ran photos under the headline "Cameron Caught Cheating." It claimed she had cheated on her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, with Shane Nickerson, the married MTV producer of her show Trippin'. Diaz complained, and the article was taken down. The publisher, American Media Incorporated, apologized and admitted that the picture showed only a goodbye hug between friends. She received substantial defamation damages.

  A second dispute began in 2003, ahead of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The photographer John Rutter had made unreleased images of her in 1992. He offered to sell them to her for a large sum. She regarded this as attempted blackmail and sued him. In July 2004, a thirty-minute video from the shoot appeared on a Russian website, and Rutter denied releasing it. On the 16th of September 2005, he was sentenced to more than three years in prison for attempted grand theft, forgery, and perjury.

  Her romantic history was widely covered. She dated Matt Dillon, her There's Something About Mary co-star, from January 1996 to September 1998. She was unofficially engaged to Jared Leto between 1999 and 2003. In 2004 she was rumored to be with Robbie Williams, which she denied. She dated Timberlake from April 2003 to December 2006, and Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees from May 2010 to September 2011.

  On the 5th of January 2015, Diaz married the Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden at her home in Beverly Hills, in a Jewish ceremony. Her close friend Nicole Richie, married to Madden's twin brother Joel, had introduced them ten months earlier.

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• 8. Hiatus And Return

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  In July 2017, Diaz explained that she had grown tired of traveling for filming. The break had begun after Annie, and she confirmed her retirement the following March. She had already published The Body Book, co-written with Sandra Bark, in late 2013, and it reached number two on The New York Times Best Seller list in March 2014. In June 2016 she published The Longevity Book.

  She turned to business. She invested in health and biotech startups, among them Seed Health and Modern Acupuncture. In May 2019 she gave a keynote at EEEEEATSCON, the annual food festival of The Infatuation. In 2020 she launched Avaline, an organic wine brand, with her business partner Katherine Power. In 2022 she appeared as a guest judge in the season opener of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 7, and said she was a huge fan of the show.

  In June 2022, it was announced that she would act again, opposite Jamie Foxx in the Netflix action comedy Back in Action. It was released on the 17th of January 2025. In March 2024, she was reported to be in talks to star with Keanu Reeves in the Apple Original Film Outcome, and filming began later that month.

  Her family grew during these years. In December 2019, she and Madden had a daughter through a surrogate. In March 2024, they announced a son. In May 2026, they announced the birth of a third child, another son.

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