Getting to Know: Cameron Diaz

Twenty years have passed since Cameron Diaz first voiced Princess Fiona in Shrek. She went on to play the character three more times over the next decade. But Diaz has been out of the spotlight since 2014. So, as she enters her 50th year, Cinema Paradiso feels it's time to remind everyone about what they've been missing.

Cameron Diaz might have been a movie star for over a quarter of a century. She may also have written two successful books: The Body Book: Feed, Move, Understand and Love Your Amazing Body (2013) and The Longevity Book: The Science of Ageing, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time (2016). But, while she has done so many interviews and magazine shoots that her face is instantly recognisable, Diaz has also done a pretty good job of keeping her off-screen life as private as possible. So, let's find out a bit more about the fifth highest-grossing actress in American box-office history.

From Snoop Dogg to Snapped Up

Cameron Michelle Diaz was born in San Diego, California on 30 August 1972. However, she and older sister Chimene were raised in Long Beach by Emilio Diaz and his wife, Billie. Although her father was born in California, his family hailed from Spain and had settled in Cuba prior to relocating to Florida.

Emilio worked as a foreman at the Unocal oil company and Diaz's dedication to ecological causes undoubtedly owes much to her childhood experiences. 'I could see the flame from the refinery burning from my bedroom window,' she told one interviewer. She also remembers the 18-wheel trucks driving past the family home carrying toxic waste and depositing it in the pools in her neighbourhood. No wonder she suffered from asthma as a girl.

Something of a free spirit at Los Cerritos Elementary School, Diaz was bullied at Long Beach Polytechnic High School for being so thin. According to some profiles, however, she was capable of fighting back. She was also a bit of a rebel and claims to have bought weed from Snoop Dogg, who was in the year above her. However, her school days came to a premature end, when she was offered the chance of a lifetime at just 16.

Elite From the Outset

In 1989, Diaz accompanied her sister to a party at the Spice nightclub in Hollywood. During the course of the evening, eight different people gave her their cards and urged her to call if she ever fancied doing some modelling. According to fashion photographer Jeff Dunas, Diaz chose his card because it gave his address as well as his phone number and they arranged a photo session. Two days later, Diaz was signed up by Elite Model Management and was soon in demand for magazine and advertising shoots.

In a cover interview with Seventeen, Diaz admitted that she would 'probably model until I'm old and gray'. However, she confided that 'my ultimate dream is to be a zoologist. Maybe go on safari in Africa and study lions.' Assignments with Calvin Klein, Levi's, Nivea and Coca-Cola took her mind off big cats, however, as Diaz travelled to Mexico, Europe, North Africa, Japan and Australia.

She spent three months Down Under in 1991 before returning to California. The following year, the 19 year-old posed in leather fashion lingerie for photographer John Rutter, who also took some topless shots of Diaz, as well as some video footage. Eleven years later, he contacted the star with an offer to purchase the material for $3.5 million.

Diaz informed the police that she was being blackmailed and Rutter was jailed for three years and eight months in September 2005, when the court dismissed his contention that he had merely been giving Diaz first refusal on the images before he offered them to other clients. In July 2004, the pictures surfaced on a Russian-registered website in a 30-minute video entitled, She's No Angel , in a effort to cash in on Diaz's connection with the Charlie's Angels franchise.

Back in the early 1990s, Diaz was based in Paris when Elite got a call from a casting director who was looking for a model type. The agency brought Diaz back from Europe and director Chuck Russell auditioned her for the role of reporter Peggy Brandt in The Mask (1994). However, he was so impressed with the newcomer that he gave this minor part to Amy Yasbeck and sought to persuade the producers that the untried Diaz was a better fit than their preferred choice, Anna Nicole Smith, to play the key role of jazz singer Tina Carlyle opposite Jim Carrey, as milquetoast bank clerk, Stanley Ipkiss.

By all accounts, it required 12 callbacks to convince the suits, but Diaz lit up the screen in one of the most notable debuts of the decade. Comparisons were made with Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard, as she matched Carrey in the comic stakes while also providing fresh-faced glamour. Despite her doubts that she had what it took to act, Diaz became an overnight star at the age of 21 when the picture took $120 million at the box office.

Rather than play the fame game and hold out for blockbuster roles, however, Diaz signed up for Stacy Title's The Last Supper (1995), a black comedy that sees Jude (Diaz) and fellow students Pete (Ron Eldard), Paulie (Annabeth Gish), Marc (Jonathan Penner) and Luke (Courtney B. Vance) seek to reduce the number of ultra- conservatives in their Iowa town by inviting them to dinner parties with a twist.

Having been forced to pass the part of Sonya Blade in Paul W.S. Anderson's Mortal Kombat (1995) to Bridgette Wilson after breaking her hand in training, Diaz showed a darker side in Edward Burns's She's the One (1996), as she plays Heather Davis, who comes between Irish Catholic brothers

Mickey (Burns) and Francis Fitzpatrick (Mike McGlone), even though they're respectively involved with Renee (Jennifer Aniston) and Hope (Maxine Bahns).

The same year saw Diaz partner Keanu Reeves in Steven Baigelman's crime dramedy, Feeling Minnesota. In order to pay off a debt to nightclub owner, Red (Delroy Lindo), stripper Freddie (Diaz) marries Sam Clayton (Vincent D'Onofrio). However, the situation becomes complicated when she rapidly forms an attachment to brother-in-law Jjaks (Reeves) and they decide to scarper with Sam's cash. Reviews were mixed, but Diaz brought verve to the role and was again singled out for her performance in Jim Wilson's Head Above Water (1996), a remake of Norwegian Nils Gaup's 1993 comedy of errors, in which newlyweds George (Harvey Keitel) and Nathalie (Diaz) bump into two of her old flames, Lance (Craig Sheffer) and Kent (Billy Zane) on their honeymoon.

Finding her feet in independent productions had proved a wise strategy, but Diaz took a rare misstep in Leslie Greif's Keys to Tulsa (1997). However, she's only briefly seen as Trudy, the gold-digging blind date who tries to make a move on film critic Richter Boudreau (Eric Stoltz), the black sheep of a family whose habit of falling in with the wrong people leads him to get involved with drug dealer Ronnie Stover (James Spader), his unhappy wife, Vicky (Deborah Kara Unger), her alcoholic brother, Keith, and exotic dancer, Cherry (Joanna Going). The critics were unkind, with one suggesting the film had 'been directed by a coma victim and edited by an axe maniac' - which, of course, makes it a must-see from Cinema Paradiso. But Diaz's fortunes were about to change dramatically.

There's Something About Cameron

Although she was only in a supporting role, Diaz stole the show in P.J. Hogan's hit comedy, My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). What makes this feat even more impressive was that her co-stars were Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett, who were on scintillating form in the 'Say a Little Prayer' sequence. But Diaz dazzled as bride-to-be Kimmy Wallace belting out a discordant karaoke rendition of 'I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself' after asking food critic Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) to be her maid of honour.

A teaming with Ewan McGregor proved less effective in Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary (1997), which was scripted by John Hodge and produced by Andrew Macdonald. However, the triumvirate failed to match the success of Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996) with a tale in which angels O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) come to Earth to make kidnap victim Celine Naville (Diaz) fall in love with her abductor, Robert Lewis (McGregor). A well-intentioned cameo as a TV reporter in Terry Gilliam's adaptation of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) also failed to find favour.

But Diaz wasn't down for long, as a squirm-inducing hair gel joke devised by brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly put her head and shoulders above her competitors as Mary Jensen in There's Something About Mary (1998). She might have missed out on the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for the guileless way in which her Miami-based orthopaedic surgeon enchants both old classmate Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) and Pat Healy (Matt Dillon), the private eye hired to track Mary down. But Cinema Paradiso users can clearly see how she snagged awards from MTV, Blockbuster and the New York Film Critics Circle for her career-making turn.

Scooping $369 million worldwide, this grossout farce proved Diaz was a commercial asset, as well as America's new sweetheart. Rather than being bundled into formulaic romcoms, however, she chose to go her own way in accepting the role of Laura Garrety in Peter Berg's pitch black directorial debut, Very Bad Things (1998). Despite the fact that fiancé Kyle Fisher (Jon Favreau) is being menaced by the deranged Robert Boyd (Christian Slater) following a murderous bachelor party, the highly strung Laura refuses to allow anyone or anything to ruin her big day.

Ironically, her own love life was going through an upheaval around this time, as she broke up with Matt Dillon and started dating Jared Leto. However, the couple were careful to keep the liaison under wraps, so the focus remained on their acting rather than their celebrity. It proved a wise move, as Diaz made the boldest choice of her career to date in donning a frizzy wig and dressing down to play Lotte, the pet-obsessed wife of New York puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) in Spike Jonze's Charlie Kaufman-scripted classic, Being John Malkovich (1999).

Although Catherine Keener (as love rival Maxine Lund) stole her thunder with a Best Supporting Actress nod at the Oscars, Diaz still managed to earn recognition at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. She also drew the admiration of her peers with a Screen Actors Guild nomination. Moreover, she further demonstrated her widening versatility, as she did once more in playing Christina Pagniacci, the ambitious new owner of an American Football team, whose ideas and methods bring her into conflict with veteran Miami Sharks coach, Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino), in Oliver Stone's gripping sports saga, Any Given Sunday (1999).

Switching from ruthless to lovesick, Diaz plays the blind Carol Faber in Rodrigo Garcia's Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her, a twisting ensemble piece that turns around a suicide case being investigated by Carol's cop sister, Kathy (Amy Brenneman). While this all-star drama dipped below the radar, it was impossible to miss Diaz's teaming as Natalie Cook with Drew Barrymore (Dylan Sanders) and Lucy Liu (Alex Munday) in McG's Charlie's Angels (both 2000), a big-screen revamp of the TV series of the same name (1976-81), which had starred Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith. Diaz's underwear dance scene failed to distract the critics from the picture's shortcomings. But the trio threw themselves into the action sequences and did enough business to merit a sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), which proved to be the final screen outing for John Forsythe, who had voiced Charlie in Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts's original series.

In Her Shoes

Despite flirting with the marquee mainstream, Diaz remained loyal to the indie scene and took a supporting role in Adam Brooks's adaptation of Jennifer Egan's novel, The Invisible Circus (2001). She appears only in flashback as Faith O'Connor, however, as younger sister Phoebe (Jordana Brewster) travels to Europe in 1976 in order to discover how she met her fate at the foot of a Portuguese precipice.

In a marked change of pace, Diaz ventured into animation for the first time to voice Princess Fiona in Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jensen's Shrek (2001). Produced by DreamWorks from a book by William Steig, the story cleverly debunks fairytale tropes in showing how an ogre named Shrek (Mike Myers) wins the heart of a princess who has been cursed to turn into an ogress at sunset.

The first winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, this instant family favourite took $484.4 million at the global box office and spawned the sequels, Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007) and Shrek Forever After (2010), as well as the holiday specials, Shrek the Halls (2007) and Scared Shrekless (2010). Antonio Banderas also returned for the stand-alone spin-off, Puss in Boots (2010), which makes you wonder why no one thought to give Donkey (Eddie Murphy) his own vehicle.

Looking to reinforce her growing reputation for weightier roles, Diaz played Julie Gianni in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001), a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes (1997) that saw Penélope Cruz reprise the role of the beautiful stranger whose hold over playboy publisher Tom Cruise provokes the vengeful jealousy of his lover. Paul McCartney's theme was nominated for an Oscar, while Diaz landed Best Supporting nominations at the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards. But the critics preferred the original and Cinema Paradiso users can judge if they were right by treating themselves to a double bill.

Having tested her range, Diaz returned to the romcom in Roger Kumble's The Sweetest Thing, which screenwriter Nancy Pimental had based on her misadventures with actress friend, Kate Walsh. As interior designer Christina Walters, Diaz drags divorce lawyer Courtney Wallace (Christina Applegate) on a quest to track down Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane), a stranger she meets at a San Francisco nightclub. However, Diaz was only seen in cameo mode in Dewey Nicks's Slackers and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (all 2002).

Not many actors work with Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in the same year, but Diaz followed an uncredited bit as a woman on a train in the Philip K. Dick adaptation by playing 19th-century street pickpocket Jenny Everdeane in a grittily lavish take on Herbert Asbury's 1927 novel, Gangs of New York (2002). She is pursued by both Johnny Sirocco (Henry Thomas) and Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has infiltrated the Five Points gang of William 'Bill the Butcher' Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in order to avenge his father, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), the murdered head of the banned Irish outlaws, the Dead Rabbits.

Diaz earned her fourth Golden Globe nomination, although her Irish accent was the subject of much debate. However, her nose also made the headlines when she broke it while surfing in Hawaii in 2003. In all, Diaz broke her nose four times before having surgery. But the problems didn't prevent her from producing and presenting the MTV series, Trippin' (2004-05), which followed various celebrities on expeditions designed to alert viewers to environmental issues. Nor did they stop her from suing American Media Incorporated after The National Enquirer ran an online story about Diaz cheating on boyfriend Justin Timberlake with Trippin' producer, Shane Nickerson.

Staying on an eco note, Diaz guested in Bruce Wuth's documentary, He Changed Our World: Steve Irwin Memorial Tribute (2006). Perhaps more surprisingly, she also cropped up on Leigh Francis's Bo' Selecta in 2003 and the debut episode of Lisa Kudrow's spoof documentary series, The Comeback (2005-14). But her most unexpected guest slot sees her taking on Tom Cruise in the 'Star in a Reasonably Priced Car' section of a 2010 episode of the BBCs' long-running motoring programme, Top Gear. For the record, she completed the lap in one minute 45.2 seconds.

Back at the day job, Diaz teamed with Toni Collette in Curtis Hanson's take on Jennifer Weiner's bestseller, In Her Shoes (2005). Ever since their mother was killed in a car crash, Philadelphia lawyer Rose Feller (Collette) has kept an eye out for her dyslexic sister, Maggie (Diaz). However, she's also something of a loose cannon and it's only when they reconnect with their estranged grandmother, Ella Hirsch (Shirley MacLaine), that the siblings discover they have more in common than a shoe size.

The following year, Diaz cemented her status as a Chick Flick icon as Amanda Woods in Nancy Meyers's The Holiday (2006). As a movie trailer producer who needs to get out of Hollywood after her boyfriend cheats on her, Amanda arranges a house swap with Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet), the society columnist of the Daily Telegraph, who also needs a change of scene over Christmas after discovering that her needy ex-boyfriend is engaged. We could tell you what happens when Amanda meets Iris's brother, Graham (Jude Law), and Iris encounter's Miles (Jack Black), who works with Amanda's composer ex. But that would spoil the fun of renting the film on high-quality DVD or Blu-ray from Cinema Paradiso.

More to Life

Either side of working on Shrek the Third, Diaz appeared in a couple of documentaries, Matthew Sussman's Who Is Norman Lloyd? and Rick Calne and Debbie Melnyk's Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore (both 2007). She moved back into make-believe with Tom Vaughan's What Happens in Vegas (2008), a romcom that sees Wall Street equity trader Joy McNally (Diaz) and carpenter Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher) head to Nevada to forget their cares. However, these multiply after they win a slot machine jackpot after drunkenly getting married, only to discover that Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller) won't let them get divorced.

Once again, the critics turned up their noses. But punters turned the $35 million project into a $219 million hit that confirmed Diaz as one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. Yet rather than cashing in with more of the same, Diaz spent 2009 making two very different pictures. In Nick Cassavetes's adaptation of Jodi Picoult's novel, My Sister's Keeper, she plays mother Sara Fitzgerald, who has a problematic relationship with Anna (Abigail Breslin), the daughter who was conceived to be a donor for her sister, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who has acute promyelocytic leukaemia. By contrast, the life and death situation in Richard Kelly's The Box arises when Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) presents 1970s married couple, Arthur and Norma Lewis (James Marsden and Diaz), with a box and a promise of a million dollars if they press the button in the lid that will cause someone somewhere to die.

Richard Matheson's short story, 'Button, Button', had been turned into an episode of the 1985-89 revival of The Twilight Zone. However, critics felt Kelly's psychological horror was more on a par with Southland Tales (2006) than Donnie Darko (2001) and Diaz had to accept the fact that she was seen by more people in her 2009 YouTube clip, Cameron Diaz Saves the World! , an eco warning that led to her being named one Time magazines's Heroes of the Environment.

The following year, Forbes announced that Diaz was the richest female celebrity in the United States. This only placed her at No.60 on their hot 100 list, but Diaz proved her pulling power again when Shrek Forever After amassed a worldwide take of $752 million. Another $262 million tumbled in when she reunited with Tom Cruise on James Mangold's Knight and Day (2010), in which she plays classic car restorer June Havens, who bumps into secret agent Roy Miller (Cruise) at an airport and is mistaken for his accomplice by CIA operative John Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard).

While this caper was played for laughs as much as thrills, the humour was dialled down a touch in Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet (2011), a revival of the 1930s radio series created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker. Diaz displays typical brio as Lenore Case, a researcher on the Los Angeles Daily Sentinel who has no idea that publisher Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) and his valet-mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou), are the masked crime fighters on the trail of Russian mobster, Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz).

The reviews might not have been universally supportive, but the picture made money. As did Jake Kasdan's Bad Teacher (2011), in which Diaz has a blast playing against type as Elizabeth Halsey, a teacher at Chicago's John Adams High School who hates her students and only bothers coming to work for the cash she is putting aside for a boob job after being dumped by her rich fiancé. The R rating meant that the picture didn't reach its target audience Stateside, but Diaz was commended for her outré performance.

True to form, she followed it with an abrupt change of direction, as she played Jules Baxter, the host of a TV dieting show whose place in a celebrity dance competition is jeopardised after a visit to the doctor in Kirk Jones's What to Expect When You're Expecting. Diaz was only on set for two weeks in this stellar ensembler, which also featured Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks and Anna Kendrick. Unfortunately, she bounced off it and into Michael Hoffman's Gambit (2012), a remake of Ronald Neame's 1966 caper of the same name that had paired Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine. Despite Joel and Ethan Coen penning the screenplay, Diaz and Colin Firth struggled to gel as rodeo queen PJ Puznowski and art dealer Harry Deane.

Having voiced Sigmund Freud in Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson and Ben Timlett's animated biopic, A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman (2012), Diaz found herself alongside Woody Allen and Stephen Hawking in The Unbelievers (2013), Gus Holwerda's profile of scientists, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, who believe the world should be dictated by reason rather than religion.

Diaz slipped into femme fatale mode in Ridley Scott's The Counsellor (2013), an uncompromising crime thriller that was scripted by Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy. In one of her most daring displays, Diaz is forever on the lookout for the main chance as Malkina, an exotic dancer with a past who seeks to change her future by ambushing the drug deal that Mexican kingpin lover Reiner (Javier Bardem) is planning with his furtive lawyer (Michael Fassbender).

Following a cameo as herself in the trailer for The Amazon Games in Lake Bell's In a World... (2013), Diaz reunited with director Nick Cassavetes for The Other Woman (2014), in which New York attorney Carly Whitten discovers that businessman beau Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is not only married to Kate (Leslie Mann), but is also having a fling with 22 year-old Amber (Kate Upton). Rather than get angry, however, the women decide to get even.

The same sense of madcap comedy also informs Jake Kasdan's Sex Tape, which sees Jay and Annie Hargrove accidentally send the porno they made in a bid to spice up their love life to the online cloud. Much was made of the fact that Diaz and Jason Segel filmed the raunchy antics inspired by The Joy of Sex in the buff. But their naughty bits were discreetly hidden in a romp that never quite hits the comic highs, despite a spirited sequence at the home of hypocritical family values champion, Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe).

Although no one knew at the time, Will Gluck's Annie (2014) would prove to be Diaz's last film to date. She plays Colleen Hannigan, the head of the Hudson Street Orphanage, who had been essayed (as Agatha) by Carol Burnett in John Huston's 1982 takeon Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan's musical reworking of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie cartoon strip. Quvenzhané Wallis charms in the title role, but one critic claimed that Diaz 'overacts the role to the point of hysteria'.

Feeling disenchanted with her hard-knock life, Diaz decided to take a break that has been extended since marrying Good Charlotte musician Benji Madden and giving birth to their daughter, Raddix, in December 2019. The following year, Diaz also launched the Avaline organic wine business with Katherine Power. Of course, we miss her. But long may she enjoy what she's doing. She once claimed in discussing her eco concerns that 'the planet needs a publicist'. Maybe that could be her next role?