C A M E R O N   D I A Z
Candid Cami

There’s something about this actress who strikes a chord instantly with the audiences, something which doesn’t let you even once take your eyes off the screen...

In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Cameron Diaz did the unthinkable: she out-cuted pretty woman Julia Roberts. Now her comic turn opposite boyfriend Matt Dillon in the slapstick comedy There’s Something About Mary is earning comparisons to Lucille Ball. There’s something refreshing about a beautiful woman who’s not afraid to make a fool of herself. What’s the secret of her success? “Beats me!” she says, “People ask me all the time what the process of my work, my craft is. I’m not sure I know — or if I have one.” Don’t buy the blissfully ignorant act. Simply put (by her ...Wedding co-star Rupert Everett, “Cameron is one smart cookie and she knows precisely what she’s doing.”

Her start

After modelling and making a string of commercials, Diaz jokingly told her agent she wanted to be on the big screen. He took her seriously, and set up an audition for The Mask. She created a stir with the director, but movie execs were hesitant (she’d only had a semester of drama class in high school), so they asked her to read for the part 12 times. Persistence paid off. She was cast as the object of Jim Carrey’s animated affections and pulled off the model-turned-actress feat, virtually overnight.

No stereotyping

After The Mask, Diaz wisely passed on a string of second-rate roles and instead picked quirky characters in such indie films as Feeling Minnesota, The Last Supper, She’s The One and Head Above Water (as Harvey Keitel’s wife). “Your chances of coming across material in independent films — material that is more interesting and more challenging — is more likely than in big-studio films,” Diaz once said. Each film brought more acclaim, and she was named the “Female Star of Tomorrow” by the National Association of Theater Owners in 1996, an honour previously bestowed on Julia Ormond, Juliette Lewis and Nicole Kidman. “What has made her such a star at such a young age is her refusal to be stereotyped,” says Leonard Maltin, film critic for Entertainment Tonight, and a movie historian, “It shows what strength and showbiz savvy she has.”

“Mary”

In There’s Something About Mary, Diaz’s co-star is her boyfriend of two years, Matt Dillon. He plays a private investigator who falls for the woman he’s supposed to find (Diaz). “It takes an incredible amount of maturity to work with your boyfriend,” she has said, “I tried to look at him totally as an actor, not to allow the baggage that you have in a relationship to interfere.” The slapstick role in ...Mary may be perfect for Diaz. “I think her tremendous appeal is she’s not afraid to laugh at herself,” says Feeling Minnesota writer-director Steven Baigelman, “And that’s much sexier than standoffishness.”

Growing up

The younger daughter of a Cuban-American dad and a German-English-Native American mom, Diaz says prejudiced classmates taunted her. “My dad taught me how to take care of myself,” she says. “When I was in school and kids were picking on me because I was so skinny or because my last name was Diaz, he said, ‘If they challenge you to an after-school fight, you tell them you won’t wait — you can kick their butt right now.’ And I did.”

At the age of 16, Diaz quit high school and left Long Beach, Calif., to become a runway model. She convinced her folks to let her continent-hop through Europe, Australia and Japan (“They trusted me — what can I say?” she has said), as she built a successful career with the Elite Modelling Agency. Of the unchaperoned nights in bars and discos all she will say is this: “I was a wild child and I grew up fast.” Clearly she’s got her act — and acting — together now