Cameron Diaz

Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American retired actress and former model. She gained fame in the 1990s with roles in the blockbuster films The Mask, My Best Friend's Wedding, and There's Something About Mary. Other notable film credits include Charlie's Angels, Vanilla Sky, Gangs of New York, and voicing Princess Fiona in the Shrek film series. Diaz received Golden Globe nominations for her performances in There's Something About Mary, Being John Malkovich, Vanilla Sky, and Gangs of New York.

Early life
Diaz was born in San Diego, California, the daughter of Billie (née Early), an import-export agent, and Emilio Diaz (1949–2008), who worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for more than 20 years as a field gauger. Her father, who was born in Los Angeles County, was a second-generation Cuban American (her paternal grandparents settled in Tampa's Ybor City) and her mother is of English, German and Cherokee ancestry. She is blond and blue-eyed, standing 5'9" tall. She has one older sister, Chimene, and one older brother, Michael. She attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School.

Modeling
At 16, she began her career as a fashion model. Diaz signed with top modeling agency Elite Model Management. For the next few years, her modeling took her around the world, working for contracts with major companies. She modeled for designers such as Calvin Klein and Levi's. When she was seventeen she was featured on the cover of the July 1990 issue of Seventeen magazine.

Acting
At 21, Diaz auditioned for The Mask, even though she had no previous acting experience, based on the recommendation of an agent for Elite who met the film's producers while they were searching for the female lead. After obtaining the lead female role, she immediately started acting lessons. The Mask became one of the top ten highest grossing films of 1994, and earned Diaz nominations for several awards.

Over the next three years, she took roles in low-budget independent films, such as The Last Supper (1995), Feeling Minnesota (1996), She's the One (1996), Keys to Tulsa (1996), and A Life Less Ordinary (1997), preferring to feel her way effectively into the business.

She returned to mainstream films with the major box office successes My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and There's Something About Mary (1998), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Actress — Musical or Comedy. She received critical acclaim for her performance in Being John Malkovich (1999), which earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the BAFTA Awards, and the SAG Awards. During 1990–2000, Diaz starred in many films, such as Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Very Bad Things, Any Given Sunday, and the hit adaptation of Charlie's Angels. In 2001, she won nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the AFI Awards for Vanilla Sky, and also voiced Princess Fiona in Shrek, for which she earned $10 million.

In 2003, Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese's epic Gangs of New York, and became the third actress (after Wedding costar Julia Roberts) to earn $20 million for a role, receiving the sum for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Her next films were In Her Shoes (2005), and The Holiday (2006). She was set to team up again with The Mask co-star Jim Carrey in the film Fun with Dick and Jane, but dropped out to star in In Her Shoes. Diaz reportedly earned $50 million in the period of a year ending June 2008, for her roles in What Happens in Vegas opposite Ashton Kutcher, and the Shrek sequels. In 2009, she starred in the films My Sister's Keeper and The Box.

In 2010, Diaz again voiced Princess Fiona in Shrek Forever After, and reunited with her Vanilla Sky costar Tom Cruise in the action/comedy Knight and Day.

In 2002, she was cast in Martin Scorsese's period epic Gangs of New York, for which she earned her fourth Golden Globe nomination. Her subsequent films included the dramatic comedies In Her Shoes (2005) and The Holiday (2006) and the psychological thriller The Box (2009). Diaz appeared in a supporting role in The Green Hornet in 2011, followed by starring roles in the comedies Bad Teacher (2011) and The Other Woman (2014). Her final performance before retiring from acting was Will Gluck's 2014 film adaptation of Annie.

Diaz has also written two health books: The Body Book (2013), a New York Times bestseller, and The Longevity Book (2016).

Personal life


Diaz received "substantial" defamation damages from suing American Media Incorporated, after The National Enquirer had claimed she was cheating on then-boyfriend Timberlake.

In 1992, Diaz appeared in a soft-core S&M video entitled "She's No Angel" shot by photographer John Rutter. In 2003, she won an injunction against Rutter preventing him from distributing the video or accompanying photographs, but in 2004, the video was distributed online through a Russian website.

When Diaz was asked if she can speak Spanish she said: I go, 'God, you know, it all sounds so familiar. I know what you're saying, I really do. I just cannot respond to you back in Spanish. I can barely speak English properly.' I didn't grow up in a Cuban community. I grew up in Southern California on the beach, basically. And I'm third generation. I'm of Cuban descent.

She was vocal in her support for Al Gore in 2000. Diaz went so far as sporting a t-shirt that read "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" while making the publicity rounds for Charlie's Angels.

Diaz has also been involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest nonprofit for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has spoken as an advocate for military families.

Although she was quoted in a 1997 Time Magazine article saying she was germophobic, Diaz specifically denied this on the June 26, 2009 edition of Real Time with Bill Maher, saying that a small comment she made 12 years earlier regarding public bathroom doorknobs was blown out of proportion.

On April 15, 2008, her father, Emilio Diaz, died of pneumonia, aged 58.

Relationships
From 1990 to 1995, Diaz dated unemployed student Matt Hanson In 1995, she began a relationship with actor Matt Dillon, with whom she co-starred in There's Something About Mary and broke up with in 1998. She then had a relationship with singer/actor Jared Leto from 1999 to 2003. Diaz dated singer Justin Timberlake from 2003 to 2006. In October 2004, Diaz and Timberlake were in an altercation with a tabloid photographer outside a hotel. When the photographer and another man tried to photograph them, the couple snatched the camera. Pictures of the incident appeared in Us Weekly. Representatives for the pair claimed that they were ambushed and acting out. In July 2010, Diaz was in a romantic relationship with New York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez. In 2010, Forbes ranked Diaz as the richest female celebrity, ranking her number 60 among the wealthiest 100. Also that year, Diaz reprised her voice role of Princess Fiona in Shrek Forever After, the fourth installment in the Shrek series. Although the film opened to mixed reviews from critics, it grossed a worldwide total of over US$752 million and became the fifth top-grossing films released that year. Also in 2010, Diaz reunited with her Vanilla Sky co-star Tom Cruise in the action comedy film Knight and Day. In it, Diaz plays a classic car restorer who unwittingly gets caught up with the eccentric secret agent Roy Miller, played by Cruise, who is on the run from the Secret Service. Knight and Day received mixed reviews,and while the comedy performed poorly at the box office in its debut, it became a sleeper hit at the box office with a worldwide gross of US$262 million.Beginning in May 2010, Diaz began dating former New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez. Their relationship ended in September 2011.

In 2011, Diaz was cast as Lenore Case, a journalist, in the remake of the 1940s film The Green Hornet. Directed by Michel Gondry, Diaz starred alongside Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, and Christoph Waltz in the superhero action comedy film. Released to mixed to negative reviews from critics, who called it an "overblown, interminable and unfunny update",the film ended its theatrical run on April 21, 2011, with a worldwide gross total of US$228 million.The same year, she played opposite Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel in Jake Kasdan's adult comedy Bad Teacher. In the film, Diaz plays an immoral, gold-digging Chicago-area middle school teacher at the fictional John Adams Middle School who curses at her students, drinks heavily, and smokes marijuana. Again, it received mostly negative reviews from critics who felt that "in spite of a promising concept and a charmingly brazen performance from Diaz, Bad Teacher is never as funny as it should be." A commercial hit however, the R-rated comedy grossed US$216 million worldwide. Also in 2011, Diaz was listed among CEOWorld Magazine 's Top Accomplished Women Entertainers.

2012–2014: Final film acting rolesEdit
In 2012 Diaz was cast in What to Expect When You're Expecting, directed by Kirk Jones and based on the pregnancy guide of the same name. Diaz, who filmed her scenes in a two-week period, portrays Jules Baxter, a contestant on a celebrity dance show and a host to a weight-loss fitness show, who becomes pregnant with her dance partner's baby. Upon release, the ensemble comedy received mostly negative reviews, but became a moderate commercial success with a worldwide gross of US$84.4 million. Diaz's other film that year was Gambit, a remake of the 1966 film of the same name directed by Michael Hoffman and scripted by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews,and performed poorly at the box office, grossing only US$10 million internationally. Diaz also voiced Sigmund Freud in A Liar's Autobiography(2012), a British animated comedy film that is a (deliberately) completely inaccurate portrayal of the life of Monty Python alumnus Graham Chapman.

Kate Upton, Diaz, and Leslie Mann attending the premiere of The Other Woman in 2014

Diaz's only film project of 2013 was Ridley Scott's The Counselor, co-starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Brad Pitt. In the thriller about greed, death, the primal instincts of humans and their consequences, Diaz plays a pathological liar and a sociopath, an immigrant who is now living the high-life after escaping a sordid past as an exotic dancer. While the film's reception was negative, her performance was praised as one of her best in recent years.

Diaz's first film of 2014 was the romantic revenge comedy The Other Woman opposite Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton. While The Other Woman received mostly negative reviews from critics, who felt that it settled for cheap laughs, it opened atop the US weekend box office with earnings of US$24.7 million across the three days; it eventually made US$83.9 million in North America and US$196.7 million globally.

Her next film release in 2014 was the comedy Sex Tape, in which she starred with Jason Segel as a married couple waking up to discover that a sex tape they had made went missing, leading to a frantic search for its whereabouts. Although the negatively-reviewed film "flopped" at the domestic box office, it ultimately became a moderate commercial success with a worldwide gross of US$126 million. The role required Diaz to perform multiple scenes of nudity. On her decision to appear nude, Diaz said: "People have seen my butt. I've shown the top of my butt, the bottom of my butt. I'm not opposed to doing nudity, as long as it's part of the story. I'll do whatever has to get done if it's the right thing." Her final film that year was the film adaptation Annie, co-starring Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Rose Byrne. She took on the role of Miss Colleen Hannigan, the cruel control freak of the foster home where the titular character resides. Upon its December premiere, Anniemade US$133 million worldwide, with Diaz's performance garnering polarized reviews; critics praising her effort, but ultimately calling it too "vampy", as well as "strident and obnoxious". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone says that she "overacts the role to the point of hysteria". Diaz decided to take a break from acting following the release of Annie, stating in July 2017 that she became tired of traveling for filming, and confirmed her retirement from it the following March.

In late 2013, she published a health book, The Body Book: Feed, Move, Understand and Love Your Amazing Body, co-written with Sandra Bark. It was no. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list in March 2014. She then released The Longevity Book: The Science of Aging, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time in June 2016.She has since invested in health and biotech startups, including Seed Health and Modern Acupuncture. In May 2019, she was a keynote speaker at The Infatuation's annual food festival, EEEEEATSCON.

Diaz married musician Benji Madden at her home in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2015, in a Jewish ceremony. The couple had been introduced ten months earlier by her close friend and now sister-in-law, Nicole Richie. The couple have a daughter born in December 2019.

Diaz launched an organic wine brand in 2020 called Avaline with business partner Katherine Power.

ActivismEdit
Known for her environmental activism, she was an early adopter of the Toyota Prius hybrid and worked to promote Al Gore's Live Earth campaign, raising awareness of climate change. Diaz was also critical of the George W. Bush administration; she wore a T-shirt that read "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" while making publicity visits for Charlie's Angels.

Diaz has been involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest non-profit organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has spoken as an advocate for military families.

Filmography and awards
In 1996, Diaz received an award at the ShoWest Convention for "Female Star of Tomorrow." In 2006, she won a People's Choice Award for "Favorite Leading Lady." On June 22, 2009, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.