Best Known As: The title character in the movie Something About Mary
An athletic blonde with wide-set blue eyes, Cameron Diaz made a conspicuous movie debut opposite Jim Carrey in the wacky 1994 fantasy The Mask. Then she became a superstar by appearing in more than a dozen movies in just six years. In both independent and mainstream movies, Diaz played hot babes (She's the One, 1996), nice girls (There's Something About Mary, 1998), and even frumpy, neurotic types (Being John Malkovich, 1999). There's Something About Mary was a particular hit for Diaz, a raucous comedy featuring her as the beautiful and kindhearted object of desire for an eternally clumsy Ben Stiller. Her other films include Charlie's Angels (2000) and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003, both with Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu), Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis) and the CGI comedy series Shrek (2001-07, with Mike Myers). Diaz then took a break from the movies to appear on MTV in her own non-fiction adventure series, Trippin'. She returned to the big screen in the 2006 romantic comedy The Holiday, co-starring Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Jack Black, and also co-starred in What Happens in Vegas (2008, with Ashton Kutcher) and My Sister's Keeper (2009, starring Abigail Breslin).
Diaz's father is Cuban-American; her mother is a German, English, and native American mix... Diaz dates singer Justin Timberlake.
Model-turned-actress Cameron Diaz seemed to come out of nowhere when she made her 1994 screen debut opposite Jim Carrey in The Mask. However, her unusual beauty -- the result of her Cuban-American and Anglo-German-Native-American parentage -- helped to ensure that she would not be soon forgotten.
Born in San Diego, CA, on August 30, 1972, Diaz left school at 16 to become a model. For the next five years, she traveled the globe, working in Japan, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, and Paris. As a model for the Elite Agency, she did commercial work for such products as Coke, Nivea, and L.A. Gear. She returned to California at the age of 21 and was unknown in the film industry when cast in her breakthrough role as the target of Jim Carrey's hyper-animated lust in The Mask. Following the hoopla surrounding her performance -- or, more specifically, her physical appearance -- in the film, Diaz opted to take acting lessons and appear in a series of small, independent films, including The Last Supper (1995), She's the One (1996), and Feeling Minnesota (1996).
After starring opposite Ewan McGregor in Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary (1997), Diaz further endeared herself to audiences and critics with her performance in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). Proving herself an acceptable foil for the film's star, Julia Roberts, she went on to greater success in the Farrelly brothers' There's Something About Mary in 1998. Starring as the film's titular heroine, Diaz turned in an audience-pleasing performance in the cheerfully bawdy film, which proved to be one of the year's biggest box-office successes. The same year, Diaz cameoed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and starred as Jon Favreau's unhinged fiancée in the black comedy Very Bad Things. Now fully established as one of Hollywood's hottest properties, she accepted leads in 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which she played puppeteer John Cusack's wife, and Any Given Sunday, in which she played the president and co-owner of a football team in Oliver Stone's paean to American football.
In 2000, Diaz joined Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels, the much-hyped big-screen remake of the television classic. A comically self-aware and fairly faithful adaptation of the original series, Charlie's Angels served up Matrix-style action with retro-sensibilities, propelling the franchise into the new millennium. The following year found Diaz endearing herself to younger audiences as the voice of Princess Fiona in the animated box-office smash Shrek, as well as using her wide-eyed innocence to horrific effect in the Tom Cruise mindbender Vanilla Sky. Headlining the ill-fated comedy The Next Best Thing in 2002, Diaz would take a historical trip to the birthplace of America in director Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York before becoming the second (after Julia Roberts) actress to join the "20-Million-Dollar Club" with Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Like its predecessor, the film performed well at the box office, and Diaz further proved her box-office clout in 2004 when another sequel, Shrek 2, became the third-highest grossing film of all time.
Diaz switched gears altogether in 2005 when she headed to the small screen, hosting and producing the MTV reality show Trippin'. With its focus on ecology and conservation, the program found the actress and her celebrity pals traipsing the globe to explore various natural environments. Diaz also remained a strong presence in Hollywood during the Christmas season of 2005 in the well-received Curtis Hanson film In Her Shoes. In this picture -- adapted from the Jennifer Weiner novel by Susannah Grant -- Diaz plays the beautiful yet thoroughly harebrained and irresponsible Maggie, sister of the prim, proper, and conservative attorney Rose (Australian import Toni Collette), with whom she comes to blows during their ill-advised stint as roommates. As Maggie discovers a grandmother that she never knew existed (Shirley MacLaine) and travels to Florida to bond with the woman, Rose experiences a significant romantic breakup and decides to change careers. A long-buried and dormant secret from the past then comes to light that reunites the women and forges a path to reconciliation. In Her Shoes struck box-office gold and won the hearts of many critics. And though it surprised just about everyone who foresaw a dopey, lame-brained romantic comedy, assiduous devotees of Hanson's career were perhaps less shocked given the director's keen intelligence and marvelous track record.
Diaz maintained a relatively low profile throughout 2006, following up the Hanson film with yet another lightly comic dissection of contemporary relationships, Nancy Meyers' Holiday. In this romantic comedy, released in December 2006, Diaz plays Amanda, a City of Angels native who meets Briton Iris (Titanic star Kate Winslet) on an Internet website that encourages its users to take vacations by temporarily "swapping homes" with one another. Inevitably, Amanda falls for an Englishman (Jude Law) while Iris meets and falls for an American man (Jack Black).
Meanwhile, the actress signed on to voice Princess Fiona again for Dreamworks' tertiary installment of the Shrek franchise, Shrek the Third, which finds Prince Fiona and Shrek the Ogre married but not planning to inherit the throne. When King Harold (the voice of John Cleese) falls ill, Shrek, Puss in Boots, and Donkey foresee the need for a scion, and set out to find Fiona's rebellious cousin, Artie, the "rightful" heir to the kingdom. Pop idol Justin Timberlake, Diaz's longtime boyfriend and suitor, provided the voice for Artie.
Prior to her long-standing romantic relationship with Timberlake (a constant source of tabloid fodder and speculation), Diaz was alternately linked, offscreen, with actor Matt Dillon, actor Jared Leto (to whom she was engaged for a time), and video producer Carlos De La Torre. She has never married, and according to some sources, never has any intention of marrying. In August 2004, however, she caused an enormous media stir when she turned up alongside Timberlake at Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando -- wearing what appeared to be a massive gold band with a diamond on her left hand; the couple denied that it was an engagement ring. The very same situation recurred in January 2005, when Diaz (sporting the same jewelry) and Timberlake popped up at the Los Angeles restaurant Angelini Osteria. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
At age sixteen, she began her career as a fashion model, contracted with modeling agency Elite Model Management.[3] For the next few years, she worked around the world for contracts with major companies, modeling for designers such as Calvin Klein and Levi's.[3] When she was 17 years old, she was featured on the front cover of the July 1990 issue of the magazine Seventeen.[10]
Tom Cruise and Diaz at the MTV Movie Awards, June 6, 2010
At age 21, Diaz auditioned for the movie The Mask,[11] based on the recommendation of an agent for Elite, who met the film's producers while they were searching for the female main actress. Having no previous acting experience, she started acting lessons after being cast. The Mask became one of the top ten highest grossing films of 1994,[12] earned Diaz nominations for several awards[13] and launched her as a sex symbol.[14][15]
During 2010, Forbes Magazine ranked Cameron Diaz as the richest Hispanic female celebrity, ranking number 60 among the wealthiest 100.[20][21] Also that year, Diaz was cast as the female lead in a live action/animation hybrid film version of The Smurfs, and as well as voicing Princess Fiona for the movie Shrek Forever After, also reunited with her Vanilla Sky co-star Tom Cruise in the action/comedy Knight and Day, and on January 14, 2011, she played "Lenore Case", the journalist in the remake of the 1940s film, The Green Hornet. She was listed among CEOWORLD magazine's Top Accomplished Women Entertainers.[22] In June of that same year, she appeared alongside Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel in Bad Teacher.
Personal life
Diaz received "substantial" defamation damages from suing American Media Incorporated, after The National Enquirer had claimed she was cheating on then-paramourJustin Timberlake.[23] She endorsed Al Gore publicly during 2000. Diaz wore a t-shirt that read "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" while making publicity visits for Charlie's Angels.[24] Diaz has also been involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest nonprofit organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has spoken as an advocate for military families.[citation needed] Although she was quoted by a 1997 Time magazine article as saying she was germophobic,[25] 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 distorted out of proportion.[26] On April 15, 2008, her father, Emilio Diaz, died of pneumonia, aged 58.[27]
Relationships
During 1995, she began a relationship with actor Matt Dillon, with whom she co-starred in There's Something About Mary; the relationship ended during 1998.[28] She began dating Jared Leto in 1999 and the couple became engaged in 2000.[29] In 2003, they ended their four-year relationship.[30] Diaz dated singer Justin Timberlake from 2003 to 2006.[28] During 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 acting a scene on a set.[31] Diaz was in a romantic relationship with New York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez from July 2010 to September 2011.[32]
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