Cameron Diaz in the 90s and early 00s: how did she explode so early and so fast?

She was pretty, but also effective in comedies and drama. Her only competition at the time was Gwyneth Paltrow, who was too much of an ice queen. Also, Cameron was pretty shameless…in a good way. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t say or do.

That's just how fame worked back then. Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, and Sandra Bullock were all elevated from bit-parts to America's Sweetheart very quickly

Movies were sold on the strength of their stars, so studios needed a steady pipeline of hot, new actors aged 25-35 to sell their product

If your agent and whoever was promoting your latest movie could get you on the cover of a few key magazines and late night shows, the rest of the media would fall in line and promote you without payment or further encouragement

I'd qualify that by saying Diaz didn't really join the other beloved names I mentioned above until There's Something About Mary. Until that movie, she was one of a number of hot girls who may or may not make it to leading roles

She could have gone the same way as Liv Tyler, Denise Richards or Alicia Silverstone, who made a splash in their debuts and became very famous without really becoming viable leads in the long term.

She seemed a less intimidating version of Michelle Pfeiffer when she first hit it big.

R3 I remember when The Mask came out, she was often likened to a young and more classically beautiful Ellen Barkin.

The red dress in The Mask is one of THE all time iconic Hollywood entrances. A star making moment, seared into the memory of every 90s kid. And to think, Anna Nicole Smith turned down the part because the pay was too low.

I loved her when she broke out and rated her very highly until her failure with Gangs Of New York and dating Justin Timberlake.

R1 I never thought of Cameron and Gwyneth as competitors. Gwyneth was positioned as the new Grace Kelly, whereas Cameron was more down to earth and likable, the chick you could go to a bar and drink beer and playing drinking games with. Goop was for the female gaze, Cameron the male gaze.

R6 The quality that made Cameron the perfect 1990s it-girl backfired spectacularly in a period piece. She seemed anachronistic.

I’ll admit it, I miss Cameron Diaz movies. I hadn’t realized I’ve seen so many of them.

R8 aka Julia Roberts syndrome

Not many people realize, she had a backend deal for Bad Teacher and made $42 million, or around 20% of the gross. She has fuck you money.

R1 And now neither acts, and they’re BFFs.

Wikipedia says she is the fifth-highest-grossing actress at the domestic box office.

I was 13 in the theater watching The Mask and when the camera pans up her legs to the red dress to her face, I think I stopped breathing for a minute. I don’t think I realized women like that were out there. Nobody in Fort Smith, Arkansas looked like that.

Did she ever 'carry' a movie, or was she always a co-star?

My ex did hair in Hollywood. He still says CD is the nicest mega-star he worked with, always chatty, happy and delightful!

R15 She definitely carries Bad Teacher. It was maligned upon release, but did well at the box office and is a bit of a cult classic now. She’s very funny in it.

There were so many rumors about the nature of her career around the time of The Mask. She got her start as a nude model. The videos of her doing S&M stuff/soft core porn were a hot commodity on file sharing services back in the day.

I was told by a friend in the industry that Cameron Diaz hates Julia Roberts. This made me like Cam a lot more.

She was delightful and effervescent as the dizzy blonde ingenue. Unfortunately, you can’t be the dizzy blonde forever. She made the smart choice retiring with her millions.

I always think of Diaz as the Gen X Goldie Hawn.

R21 Excuse me

Sucking on Weinstein's dick made her a STAH!

R19 , I don’t know the reasons for that, but Cameron almost stole My Best Friends Wedding from Julia, who surely wasn’t happy about it

She gives a great performance there. It is a pity she chose so many bad movies instead of some parts where she may have gone out of her cmfort zone, she was quite a versatile actress. But good for her in knowing how to call it quits and get out ofthe race to enjoy her millions in peace.

Bad Teacher is hilarious. The character Amy Squirrel is a riot.

I loved her in The Counselor. She looked hot with gold teeth and tattoos.

No insult to her intended, because she was fun and pretty and I liked her, but my favorite memory of The Mask was that amazing dog.

The scene: Carrey is jailed, the keys to his cell are in a sleeping cop’s pocket, and he tells the dog to get the keys. The dog obediently picks up a cheese sandwich on the cop’s desk and Carrey whispers, “Not the CHEESE; the KEYS. Put the cheese down.”

And in one shot the dog reluctantly puts the sandwich down, looks to Carrey for direction, and carefully lifts the keys out of the cop’s chest pocket and brings them to him.

GOOD DOG!

Look up the MBFW reunion on one of those morning talk shows. When EW did a spread with Julia, Rupert, Dermot and Cameron. There was a couple of awkward moments. Julia and Rupert pretending there was no falling out, Cameron mumbling that she thought they were best friends and the palpable sexual tension between life long fuck buddies Dermot and Julia.

Was she a Harvey girl?

R29 no.

She was in a huge hit. The Mask. That was the film that gave her career a kickstart and made her a name. After that she had a string of hits, solidifying her as a star and she became a household name.

Yes, and she liked Chillicothe sandwiches!

[quote]I was told by a friend in the industry that Cameron Diaz hates Julia Roberts

Everybody hates Julia Roberts because she is a cunt.

Spike Jonze cheated with her while he was married to Sofia Coppola--the idiot movie star character Anna Faris plays in Lost in Translation is based on her.

The last thing I remember seeing her in was the Annie remake/update with Jamie Foxx. She was pretty funny in it although her Miss Hannigan was really just a variation of her Bad Teacher character. I’m surprised she never went the voiceover route. She has a distinctive voice that would do well in animated films

She retired after that I believe. She just filmed a movie with Jamie Foxx as a favor to him (they’re friends) and that’s it.

I know someone who had to deal with her for a photoshoot about a decade ago and said she wasn’t nice to anyone but the photographer.

I'd never heard of her or seen anything of her until Something About Mary but she was SO charming in that. It's not often that there's a model-beautiful woman who comes across as somebody really fun and awesome you'd want to have beers with, but she did. Part of it was the way the character was written, obvs, but not everybody could have made it seem real.

"The Sweetest Thing" is so underrated. It's such a quintessential guilty pleasure film. I think it's the only "raunchy girls" comedy film I've ever enjoyed in my life, mostly because the 3 main characters (Diaz, Applegate and Blair) were actually likeable, genuinely funny and had good on-screen chemistry.

The Mask was her debut role. That was a huge hit and shot her to fame. She was unknown then everyone was asking who that beautiful girl was. After that she did a few smaller films but in 1997 My Best Friends Wedding was a huge hit and right after that she was in There’s Something About Mary and quickly became a huge star and leading lady.

She got her start in a soft core porn which tells me she wasn't against fucking to get what she wanted. As we now know, Hollywood was and/or is full of dudes who were willing to make young girls who were willing to play the game very rich.

SOFTCORE porn isn’t the same as hardcore. It’s all simulation.

Do you really think Julia was not gonna put a stop to her OP?

Diaz was very, very lucky and fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to land herself a massive career.

With regard to modeling in the 90s, she actually managed to almost reach the ‘supermodel’ strata, as she had a few very high end luxury campaigns under her belt by age 19, had filmed a Coke commercial, magazine covers, etc.

Back in the 90s, if you were past 20 you were practically dead. Her agents at Elite (one of the best agencies in the world) started shopping her around for other projects since the politics of the time meant the modeling work would dry up very soon. Her agent was friends with a casting director who let her know they hadn’t cast the actress for The Mask (Anna Nicole Smith dropped out at the last minute) and basically just gave her the role. Diaz had 0 acting experience and I don’t even think she’d considered being an actor at that point, but took classes and turned out to be pretty solid for an absolute beginner.

Her coming out of nowhere I think really worked to her advantage, and while she was a very successful model, she wasn’t so famous that people could pick her out like Linda or Cindy. It was the right mix.

Tons of models have since tried to mimic Diaz’s career and failed miserably. Tyra Banks, Milla Jovovich, Rosie Huntington Whiteley etc are all widely considered terrible actors, although Milla found a niche as an action heroine.

Tyra never tried to become a serious actress. Tyra wanted to be a mogul and all around entertainer because she knew there is a street date as a model, which she was. She wanted to do it all.

Her end goal was always to produce projects and work behind the scenes.

Cameron pre The Mask.

I’ve always been a fan. She’s excellent in comedies but also has dramatic chops. Perhaps more than anything else, though, she’s unpretentious and naturally likable. I sort of regard Emma Stone as her current-day counterpart for the same reasons.

Remember her turn in “Being John Malkovich”? That was a great performance and she played totally against type. I don’t think many people thought she was capable of a performance like that. She was also great in “Gangs of New York” and “The Box”.

[quote][R6] The quality that made Cameron the perfect 1990s it-girl backfired spectacularly in a period piece. She seemed anachronistic.

Same with Meg Ryan.

A rare clip of ANS trying to decide between “The Mask” and a “Naked Gun” sequel. She was insulted by the $50,000 offer. Good news for Cameron, but Anna was badly advised being told to walk - this would have changed the trajectory of her entire career. “Naked Gun” failed to make much of an impression.

She was pretty, she could act in various genres (particularly good at comedy) and she was extremely likeable.

She’s also good in The Last Supper just a year after The Mask. It’s a fun black comedy with a great cast, worth seeking out. Maybe even more relevant today than the mid-90s

I could never forgive her for pulling down "Gangs of New York" until her brilliant turn in "The Counselor". her "GONY" performance ism an indelible stain but her femme fatale "The Counselor" is one for the ages.

The Counselor bombed. GONY was a mess overall but most say she’s terrible in it.

Quite nice tits.

Not so big, though

R53 the tits are nothing special.

Pre fame.

r31 doesn't disappoint.

R17

It cracked me up and now my friend and just call each other “fucker”, in honor of one of her lines.

The broken-nose-acne-scar-limited-talent-drunk-eye look was big at the time.

Obviously.

One of those actors where their name sounds different and interesting for their time...kind of like Maude Adams in the 1970s, Renée Zellweger in the '80s, etc. All more gimmick than genius, forever-memorable talent, IMO.

Renee Zellweger came out in the 90s. Not 80s

Is Diaz actually Latina? She’s always left out of the conversation when people discuss Latina actresses.

Diaz is only a small part Hispanic. I think one of her grandfathers was Hispanic, and her father was half Hispanic. Diaz is a Latin surname.

What’s that movie she did with Toni Collette and her playing sisters? That is such a sweet little movie, super underrated. Shirley Mackaine is their grandmother I think?

Cameron is ethnically Spanish IIRC (through her father, obviously), but the family immigrated to Cuba which is where her father was born.

R51 "Gangs of New York" was a fucking mess of a movie with or without Cameron. I love Scorsese, but this is one of his weakest films: Daniel Day Lewis' character was annoying as fuck (that Oscar nom he got should've gone instead to Ed Norton for "25TH Hour") and DiCaprio seemed invisible.

R64 That film is "In Her Shoes" (2005)

R64 In Her Shoes. I just rewatched this last week. It still holds up - very cute and comforting, although you couldn’t pick two women who look less like sisters than Diaz and Collette.

Was there a movie where Cameron Diaz played a cancer mom, or am I imagining that?

R68 why do you keep posting this? Google and IMDB exist. It’s 2024.

Yes. My Sisters Keeper

r34

[quote]The last thing I remember seeing her in was the Annie remake/update with Jamie Foxx. She was pretty funny in it although her Miss Hannigan was really just a variation of her Bad Teacher character. I’m surprised she never went the voiceover route. She has a distinctive voice that would do well in animated films

Uhhh...Shrek?

Mea culpa, r70. I never saw those movies and didn’t realize she had voiced the Princess character. I was thinking she should have gone the voiceover route after retiring from onscreen roles but she just stopped altogether.

Dumb as a box of rocks.

I thought she was great in "The Box", a very underrated sci-fi horror movie adapted from a Richard Matheson short story. I thought it was an extremely strange and unnerving movie. Lots of atmosphere. The material was much darker than what she is typically known for.

R8 true. In contrast a contemporary actress like Winona Ryder just in frail face and expressive dark eyes looked marvelous in period pieces.

R32 She is very good friends with all her male costars. I think a part of it is that she was actually playing with the men in that time as far as power goes. She was on par with them with box office hits, salary, fame and stature in the industry. That probably created a kinship amount them.

very hot and also charismatic, she seemed funny and not all stuck up. huge appeal to straight guys.

among*

I didn't see her ending up with the husband she has, but I guess it works for her. I think she is pretty average with no makeup and she probably feels comfortable with him.

The more horrible the character the wider license they have to be funny

She was wonderful in Being John Malkovich.

She’s living well. I’d be retired too.

Her husband is so turdly

Word on the street according to a celebrity makeup artist I know is that Diaz secretly battles severe psoriasis, and left Hollywood because she’s often covered in flaky skin and scales. It was getting worse and they were forced to bring in stunt nipples for one of her last romcoms, because her areolae were so crusty and cracked. She’s basically a monitor lizard under all that airbrushing.

She had better taste in scripts than Drew Barrymore.

R83 you’re saying she retired because she has chapped nipples?

I liked her in that movie The Other Woman, that was a cute comedy. It was made 10 years ago and she was looking rough in it, I think she retired because she was aging out and just wants to enjoy her life.

But was she looking dry and scaly, R86?

I was a big fan. She was fun, unpretentious and had a sense of humor. Gwnythe and Winona are too stupid and up their own asses to have that kind of easy charm. Cameron Diaz also had a great body without a ton of surgery and was naturally pretty and cute. Too bad she’s married to that dipshit poseur.

She exploded in the era where the ideal woman was beautiful but also could eat three dozen wings and burp and fart a lot watching football.

One of the guys, but fuckable.

She was the epitome of all that.

"A lucky model who's been given a lot of opportunities, I just wish she would've done more with" --Mrs Ben Affleck

I was kind of so-so on her though I thought she was a good actress. I just remember her Justin Timberlake years. She seemed really crazy about him. He really hated the paparazzi so Cameron once beat up photographer for him. She looked ridiculous.