She is 44. She is a happy wife and for the first time dreams of children. But just six years ago, in 2010, at our meeting we saw a desperate heartbreaker, an opponent of obligations and a laugher. We offer you to remember what a lover of cigars and bad guys Cameron Diaz was before marriage …
She has the most open smile, the clearest look in the most transparent eyes. She has the most infectious laugh and the longest legs in the world. She is the best – it can be seen from afar. At any rate, you can see it from the check-in counters at La Guardia Airport, where I’m standing. Because she is approaching me, trying not to hit the luggage of other passengers with her suitcase on wheels. “Hey ladies!” – she addresses the employees of the baggage checkpoint, and she is clearly the only one from the “passenger traffic” who sincerely greets them.
Strict ladies look at her with surprise, replaced by amazement. In the end, “Everything is crazy about Mary” – this film with Diaz in the main and incredibly funny role has been seen by everyone, and everyone has been crazy about Diaz since the release of this film. And here she herself, and even she herself is carrying her suitcase on wheels. And without explanation, he understands my perplexed look: “Well, of course, without protection. Why is she? I am an adult girl and I can resolve any situation.
It was she who decided that it would be convenient to meet here at the airport. “I need to fly home to Los Angeles. I can arrive at the airport in advance, and we’ll talk there,” she suggests by phone. A devoted Californian, Diaz recently bought an apartment in New York City, Manhattan. “Los Angeles is an aviary city. It’s like you’re on display in there. You can’t look up there: if you meet someone’s eyes, you’re doomed to spend the rest of the day signing autographs. And in New York, you don’t have to hunch over and you can meet the eyes of passers-by, which is much more for me. I mean, look into the eyes.”
Psychologies: Cameron, how does it feel to be liked by everyone? Men strive to be loved by you, women – to be friends with you, directors – to shoot you, producers – to sign a contract … What is it worth?
Cameron Diaz: To me? Nothing! I just live – I don’t insist on my own, I don’t lay my own track. I live without struggle. It seems to me that this is from childhood, from our family. No one fought with us – neither with life, nor with each other. The parents lived together for over 30 years, and my sister and I never saw them struggle for family leadership. Both worked, but always found time for us. The rudest thing my dad said to me in all these years: “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me which magazines you give interviews to and in which programs you perform.” This is when I played in my first film, in The Mask, and they somehow became interested in me. And I reported, and later he never complained that I was already out of breath in the media!
I don’t want to fight, I want everyone – including me – to have fun with me.
My parents are very direct but delicate people. Everyone in our family had his own opinion on everything, and everyone knew for sure that his opinion was of interest to the rest. Therefore, everyone spoke out openly, no one hid anything in himself, and the secret did not wander in him to splash out later in the form of a scandal. I don’t remember any quarrels in our family. Whatever we were fond of, the parents believed that it was right, that we should try it too. I live like this – according to the principle “we should regret not what has been done, but what has not been done”.
And if you choose the general line of my desires, then I want to live a full life and make people laugh. I don’t want to fight, I want everyone – including me – to have fun with me. Yes, I want to have fun with me. This is the main thing. But can a person have fun with himself if he constantly goes on the attack or “holds the height”? Or if he breaks through closed doors? According to my logic, you should not break into closed doors, you should open those doors that are already ajar for you. They are only yours.
But the world of cinema is a competition, a struggle for roles, for the attention of those who make decisions …
K.D.: I don’t see any fight here. If ten more actresses are trying out for the role besides me, then the competition is only in the heads of the casting participants. Each of us has to make a name for herself in order to be chosen. After all, the task is to choose you, and not to not choose others. I do not fight for life’s opportunities, I use those provided to me, and that’s it.
So you’re not trying to win the admiration of others?
K.D.: What I don’t expect is admiration. On the contrary, I think I’m quite comical. I’m losing, I’m late, I’m breaking. My shoe laces break as I lace them in a panicked hurry, brushing my mascara into my eye. She broke her nose four times, and without outside participation. I better not think about heels – dislocation is guaranteed. Something was given to me by nature, of course, growth there, thinness, memory is not bad. But I’m too far from perfect, too. And I feel it every minute.
For me, there is no elite in the world! I live horizontally! If you had not seen my photos in magazines, I would be an ordinary woman from California.
I still remember my stupidity, even 15 years ago. For example, when I was approved for the role in The Mask, I asked the producer: “Will my parents be able to see this film of yours somewhere?” The answer was: “In all theaters, Cameron.” Well, okay, I’m a blonde, I can, I reassure myself in such cases … It’s strange for me, with all the imperfections, to try to hide that I’m funny and even stupid. Ridiculous. I’m not afraid of that in the movies either. And let my Mary in Mad About Mary mistakenly use semen as hair gel. Nothing, she’s no more ridiculous than me. I gladly laugh at myself. Maybe that’s why they don’t expect anything special from me? And my minuses are automatically counted as bonuses?
Sounds like you’re not afraid of low self-esteem?
K.D.: Low self-esteem is sometimes just a realistic way of looking at things, isn’t it? In my opinion, the most important thing for a person is to accept himself. That’s why I like Princess Fiona from Shrek so much. When she was a thin blonde beauty, it was witchcraft, a hassle. She is real – a huge woman, from the generally accepted point of view of a freak. But she accepts herself as such, accepts her own nature. And therefore it is strong, and fair, and capable of radical decisions and actions.
While she was beautiful, sitting in the tower of the castle and waiting for the handsome prince, who was ordered to save her, I had nothing in common with her. When she herself decided to leave the castle, she became a real herself, realized that there is nothing prescribed in life, she became interesting to me. Because she became ugly, accepted herself and makes her own decisions.
But still you – at least by outward signs – are more like a princess …
K.D.: I’m one of those princesses who don’t really believe in the benefits of royalty. When my sister and I were little, we were given a toy medieval castle – with a bunch of puppet characters. So, we used to put aside the princess and the queen, and played with the knights on horseback, the maids in white pinafores and the cook in the kitchen.
We just didn’t understand how to play the princess, what the scenario could be. What is interesting here – to sit, do nothing, wait, so to speak, for service …
I grew up in a very democratic environment. In an industrial area with such exhaust from the highway and factory emissions that dad had a kind of ritual: when he came home before mom, he immediately began to wipe the dust from horizontal surfaces.
3,5 thousand people of different nationalities and social groups studied at our school. There were children of Mexican illegal immigrants, there were Russian Jews, Poles, children from Samoa in sarongs and tribal tattoos, guys in turbans, girls in hijabs, there were African refugees, gray-haired at 13 years old … I was and am part of this world, because my my father is Cuban and I, despite being blonde, have always been a “Cuban”, a girl from the Cuban community.
My sister and I went to visit my father’s relatives in Miami. Everyone was always rolling cigars and singing, singing! I still love to smoke a cigar, despite the fact that I am generally obsessed with a healthy lifestyle. In general, as a child, I was friends with everyone: with school “aristocrats” – whites from middle-class families, with immigrants, freaks, rip-offs, “nerds”, with those who for some reason were despised. For me, this is normal – I’m not better and not worse.
But after that, you started in the modeling business, got into the elite …
K.D.: For me, there is no elite in the world! I live horizontally! If you had not seen my photos in magazines, I would be an ordinary woman from California, one of hundreds of thousands. You know, I still consider my main talent to be the ability to stand in line. I don’t get annoyed, I don’t lose my temper, I wait. I’m waiting calmly. The queue always comes up with time. And the fact that I was a model is just a job. In something remarkable – I was able to travel. Live in Paris, Morocco, four months in Japan. In general, when faced with something else, strikingly different, you free yourself from your prejudices, fixation on yourself, on your experiences. And sometimes you just need to distance yourself.
Have you had it?
K.D.: When my father died, I did not know how to survive. And my sister did not know, and my mother. And I decided: we all need to go to Japan. Everyone – me, my mother, my sister, her children – there are four of them, my aunts and uncle … Nothing could be the same as before. In my father’s place after his departure, there was a terrible, gaping failure. It was necessary to somehow come to terms with the fact that this failure is now and forever. I thought that the only thing that can somehow reconcile us with this is if we enter a completely different environment, with different faces, relationships, foreign traditions, unfamiliar smells … Especially since Japan was the first country where my dad let me go , although I was only 16 – I received an invitation to work there as a model, the first serious professional invitation. And it made a lot of sense to me: a new place, and independence, and my father’s trust … After my father’s death, we were in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hokkaido …
Has travel helped you?
K.D.: I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that my dad was gone. But she came to terms with her feelings. Because I have to live with them.
How did this loss fit in with your ideology of joy?
K.D.: I do not have such an ideology, I have such a nature. I think… no, I feel that life is a journey, and a joyful journey. Generally joyful. Sometimes it is not first class, and dangerous, and somewhat painful, but it is never in vain and there is nothing superfluous in it. The death of my father triggered a very profound transformation in me. I don’t know yet what changes in me. But I feel something. Some new pessimism.
But still look optimistic!
K.D.: Let’s put it this way: the end of the world, I think, will come for sure, the only question is when. Like that.
What doesn’t change for you?
K.D.: Something that I cannot overcome in myself, and I do not consider it necessary. I don’t like obligations, I don’t like imposed decisions. I always want to choose myself. Therefore, it is not easy for me to work, to be honest. It is always difficult for me to finally agree to any role as well. I need to be sure: this is what I really want, that I can spend part of my life with it, I can be happy that this is how I live now.
Have you thought about where this fear of commitment comes from?
K.D.: Indiscipline, spoiled. Spoiled parental love, perhaps. The guarantees given to me by my parents in childhood that they will love me no matter what. Well, I don’t want to be obliged! I like to experience natural cravings rather than following a prescription.
Is that why you don’t have a family of your own?
K.D.: Marriage is a dying social institution. He is self-confident, encroaches on the supremacy over feelings, which means he is doomed. And love – it is not characterized by self-confidence, it is just in doubt. And this is much prettier. All my relationship experience says: at a certain point in your life, you find yourself next to the person who you need at that particular moment in life.
And the same experience testifies: parting is inevitable, each of us must go further, enter a new period of our destiny. And we part. For me, there is no problem, injury. On the contrary, many feel trapped in established relationships because they have outgrown them. And at the same time, they do not know how to get out of this trap, because it seems to them that life implies loyalty to decisions once made. But it’s not. For me it’s not.
I still consider my main talent to be the ability to stand in line.
But if one partner goes into his new period, and the other is still in that previous one, with him – doesn’t it hurt?
K.D.: Hurt. But this means one thing: that period is over. Accept it, get over it and move on. I know what I’m talking about. I parted with loved ones with whom I was connected for years. And I don’t regret anything. Plus, the men are amazing. Tremulous creatures, vulnerable, romantic. They do not know how to value time – it’s a pity for them. After all, time is a female category, we know for sure that, say, a month has passed … They are so different from us! I respect differences. They make life exciting. We cannot take each other’s place, but we can try to get to know each other better. Get a little closer.
What in life can truly excite you?
K.D.: I recently played in Nick Cassavetes’ My Guardian Angel1. Played the mother of a girl dying of cancer, a mother who is trying to save her child in every way. And Nick – he himself has a sick child, a daughter. Congenital heart defect. She spends most of her life in hospitals. And he knows what it is – a child who is probably doomed … I decided that I needed to feel it at least a little.
I was in hospitals, met mothers of little cancer patients. These women literally do everything, they know everything about every medicine, about every procedure, they do not back down if the treatment fails. I don’t want to talk about it – I start crying … Several scenes of the film were shot in one of these hospitals, there was always one boy nearby, Paul, bald, without eyelashes and eyebrows, like many children there … He died before the film came out … But here’s what I must have learned about myself in those hospitals: the only situation worth fighting for is the danger hanging over the one you love, over your child. To be honest, there are no other situations for me. This is the only one in which even a compromiser like me will not find a compromise.
You have become the highest paid actress in Hollywood, your star is on the Walk of Fame, you are in demand. Are you satisfied with this result of two decades of life and acting?
K.D.: I don’t sum up the results, because I don’t plan anything and never planned – no career, no income, nothing. Fees … Yes, I never worked for a check. I have always done what I wanted to do at the moment. I like the natural course of events – pleasant surprises are possible when you are open to change. Of course, I have a work schedule, but no personal plans.
If you don’t plan anything, then you probably dream about something?
K.D.: I dream. So that in my old age I would have many, many memories.
1 The interview was recorded in 2010.