Cameron Diaz: Not Just Another Hollywood Bombshell
In person, Cameron Diaz is every bit as bubbly and energetic as she seems onscreen. She exudes a fun, confident energy and her ear-to-ear grin is contagious. Not what you'd expect the higest paid actress in Hollywood to be, she is friendly and approachable rather than distant and glamorous. She's the kind of gal that guys want to hang with because she's gorgeous with perfect, mile-long legs, and yet she'll guzzle beer and talk with her mouth full of hot dog at a football game. She's the kind of girl that women want to be friends with because she is fun, adventurous and is great at dishing out style advice (she was a model, after all).
Cameron may also be able to add 'luckiest girl alive' to her list of attributes, not only is she now the highest paid actress in Hollywood but she, admittedly, completely lucked into her first role as Tina in The Mask, co-starring Jim Carrey. Her modeling agent (she left home at 16 to model abroad for 5 years) sent her to the audition as a complete unknown with no acting experience--and she still managed to land the role.
"When I was auditioning for The Mask, I had a moment when I was reading with Peter Greene-?I came out of it shaking, with sweaty palms, screaming, jumping up and down. I had such a good time doing it and got such a rush from it. I just went, 'This is it. This is what I want to do. I've got to get this part!'"
Never one to shy away from challenging or unattractive roles, she then went on to star in Feeling Minnesota, in which she plays a down-on-her-luck stripper/hooker/whatever who runs off with her fianc?'s criminal brother (played by Keanu Reeves). Not exactly typical starlet choices. "I knew if I just took other parts that were exactly the same as Tina, I would end up not having much of a career. I want to test what I'm capable of," she explains, "I haven't been worried about my image so much as I have been trying to find projects to push myself further than before."
Since then she has starred in numerous box-office hits such as My Best Friend's Wedding, There's Something About Mary, Vanilla Sky, Gangs of New York, Charlie's Angels, and the list goes on. In fact, she stars in about two box-office hits per year. Although she loves acting, she says that fame does have its pitfalls.
"Crowds are the most difficult thing for me these days because I have to walk with my head down and my eyes averted. There's still that part of me that wants to hold my head up, make eye contact and smile."
She passed the $20 million paycheck mark with Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle, in which she starred with friends Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore. She says she had a lot of fun shooting the two Charlie's Angels movies. "It's awesome. I have so much fun every single day and get to go to work every day with my two best friends and do the silliest things." The experience, for Cameron, was just about as good as it gets in terms of pure friendship and experiences on and off the set. "We've seen each other weak, we've seen each other strong, we've seen each other completely out of our minds!"
Although the films were fun to make, they were also gruelling at times, she admits. "There's a lot of hard work involved in training to learn the martial arts moves and making sure you don't kick someone in the face or tear up your knee. But at the same time, getting involved in this extreme physical work is incredibly enjoyable."
Despite her obviously keen negotiating skills, money is not a priority for Cameron. "I've never done this for the money," she says. "I will always want to do whatever it is that my heart is in, and whether I get paid for it or not means nothing. It doesn't matter. I'll do it if it means something to me and I want to be a part of it."
Although her career takes priority in her life, she also finds that working so much can take its toll. "Sometimes it's really hard. I do get depressed about being away from home for a long time, not having a life. But it's all about opportunity. You learn how to regulate things, and you learn to make everything work for yourself after a certain amount of time," she says, "You have to figure out how to keep it together, so that it's continually you. So that it resembles a life."
Although she is working away from home for much of the time, she has managed to have lengthy relationships with other actors who share common goals. She had a three-year relationship with Matt Dillon and was engaged to Jared Leto. Her latest love interest, however, is musician Justin Timberlake, who is nine years her junior. As far as on-screen men go, she has been paired with some of the hottest. She has starred as the love interest of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Slater, Keanu Reeves, Matt Dillon, and other famous Hollywood heart-throbs.
"I believe that when you're in love you have to pour your heart and soul out to your partner... or why bother? So in that sense I'm an incurable romantic when it comes to men."
As for a family, Cameron says she'd like to wait before taking that leap. "When I was a teenager, almost all my friends and my family were of the mindset that a woman should get married young and start having children in her early twenties. But when I started getting into modeling and traveling a bit more, I found that it's more important to find your own way in life and live a bit before you commit to having a family. Right now I still feel young and I think I need to wait a while before making that commitment."
Her Anglo-German mother and Cuban-American father clearly raised her to be modest--and she is--almost to a fault. "I think that it's really stupid to worry about image," she says, "I believe that if you didn't see my picture in magazines, I would just be another California girl sitting at a cafe or walking along the beach."
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