Cameron Diaz Biography

Summary

"Cameron Michelle Diaz" (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress and former model. She rose to prominence during the 1990s with roles in the movies "The Mask", "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "There's Something About Mary". Other high-profile credits include the two "Charlie's Angels" films, voicing the character Princess Fiona in the "Shrek" series, "The Holiday", "The Green Hornet" and "Bad Teacher". Diaz received Golden Globe award nominations for her performances in the movies "There's Something About Mary", "Being John Malkovich", "Vanilla Sky", and "Gangs of New York".

Early life

Cameron Diaz, the youngest of two sisters, was born in San Diego, California. Her mother, Billie Joann (née Early), is an import-export agent, and her father, Emilio Luis Diaz (1949-2008), worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for more than 20 years, as a field gauger. Diaz has an older sister, Chimene. Her father's family were Cuban (of Spanish descent), and settled in Tampa's Ybor City, later moving to California, where Emilio was born. Her mother has German and English ancestry. Diaz was raised in Long Beach, California and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Diaz attended the same high school with Snoop Dogg, whom she says she 'bought marijuana from.'

Career

Modeling

At age 16, she began her career as a fashion model, contracted with a modeling agency Elite Model Management. For the next few years, she worked around the world on contracts for companies such as Calvin Klein and Levi's. When she was age 17, she was featured on the front cover of the July 1990 issue of "Seventeen".

Acting

At age 19 Cameron Diaz starred in ("She's No Angel") , a 1992 soft core bondage movie. At age 21, Diaz auditioned for "The Mask", 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. Diaz's performance as the sultry lounge singer Tina Carlyle earned her nominations for several awards and launched her as a sex symbol.

Preferring to feel her way effectively into the industry, Diaz avoided large studio films for the next three years and took roles in the independent films "The Last Supper" (1995), "Feeling Minnesota" (1996), "She's the One" (1996), and "Head Above Water" (1996). She was scheduled to feature in the film "Mortal Kombat", but had to resign after breaking her hand while training for the role. During this time she earned considerable tabloid fame for being actor Matt Dillon's steady date, 1995 through 1998.

Diaz returned to mainstream films with "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "A Life Less Ordinary", both released in 1997. The following year, she played the title role in the smash hit "There's Something About Mary" (1998), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for 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 Globe Awards, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards). Between 1998 and 2000, Diaz featured in many movies, such as "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her", "Very Bad Things", "Any Given Sunday", and the successful adaptation of "Charlie's Angels". In 2001, she won nominations for Best Supporting Actress for the Golden Globe Awards, the SAG Awards, the Critics' Choice Awards, and the American Film Institute Awards for "Vanilla Sky", and also voiced Princess Fiona in the movie "Shrek", for which she earned $10 million.

In 2003, Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese's 2002 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 movies were "In Her Shoes" (2005) and "The Holiday" (2006). She was preparing to work again with "The Mask" co-star Jim Carrey for the film "Fun with Dick and Jane", but resigned to feature in "In Her Shoes". Diaz reportedly earned $50 million during 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 "My Sister's Keeper" and "The Box".

In 2010, "Forbes Magazine" ranked Cameron Diaz as the richest Hispanic female celebrity, ranking number 60 among the wealthiest 100. Also that year, Diaz voiced Princess Fiona for the movie "Shrek Forever After", and reunited with her "Vanilla Sky" co-star Tom Cruise in the action adventure "Knight and Day". In 2011, she played Lenore Case, the journalist in the remake of the 1940s film "The Green Hornet", and was the central lead in the hit comedy "Bad Teacher". She was listed among "CEOWORLD" magazine's Top Accomplished Women Entertainers.

Personal life

Diaz received 'substantial' defamation damages from suing American Media Incorporated, after "The National Enquirer" had claimed she was cheating on Justin Timberlake. 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". 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. Although she was quoted by a 1997 "Time" magazine article as 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 distorted out of proportion. On April 15, 2008, Cameron's father, Emilio Diaz, died at the age of 58 from pneumonia.

Relationships

From 1990 to December 1994, Diaz cohabited with video producer Carlos de la Torre. In 1995, Diaz dated actor Vincent D'Onofrio during the production of "Feeling Minnesota". Later in 1995, she began a relationship with actor Matt Dillon. The relationship ended in December 1998. She began dating Jared Leto in 1999, and the couple became engaged in 2000. In 2003, they ended their four-year relationship. Diaz dated singer Justin Timberlake from 2003 to 2006.name = Diaz/> 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 acting a scene on a set. Diaz was in a romantic relationship with New York Yankees baseball star Alex Rodriguez from July 2010 to September 2011.== Filmography =====Film======Television===== References ==== External links ==* * *