Cameron Diaz

Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress and former model. She became famous during the 1990s with roles in the movies The Mask, My Best Friend's Wedding, and There's Something About Mary. Other notable movie credits include Charlie's Angels, and voicing the character Princess Fiona for the Shrek series. 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

Diaz was born in San Diego, California, the daughter of Emilio Diaz (1949–2008), who worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for more than 20 years as a field gauger, and Billie (née Early), an import-export agent. Her father, who was born in Los Angeles County, was a Cuban American whose family came from Spain via Cuba (her paternal grandparents settled in Tampa's Ybor City). Her mother is of English, German, and Cherokee descent.She has two older siblings: Chimene and Michael. She attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School, where she was in the theater program for one year.

Modeling

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

Acting

Diaz at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio for the movie Gangs of New York.

Tom Cruise and Diaz at the MTV Movie Awards, June 6, 2010

At age 21, Diaz auditioned for the movie The Mask, even though she had no previous acting experience,based on the recommendation of an agent for Elite who met the film's producers while they were searching for the female main actress. After obtaining the main female role, she immediately started acting lessons. The Mask became one of the top ten highest grossing films of 1994, and earned Diaz nominations for several awards.

During the next 3 years, she had roles in low-budget independent films, such as The Last Supper (1995), Feeling Minnesota (1996), She's the One (1996), Keys to Tulsa (1996), and A Life Less Ordinary (1997), preferring to feel her way effectively into the business. She was scheduled to feature in the film Mortal Kombat, but had to resign after breaking her hand while training for the role.

She returned to mainstream films with the major movie successes My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and 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 Award, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards). During 1990–2000, 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. During 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.

During 2003, Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese's 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.

During 2010, Forbes Magazine ranked Cameron Diaz as the richest Hispanic female celebrity, ranking number 60 among the wealthiest 100. 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.

Personal life

Diaz during June 2007

Diaz received "substantial" defamation damages from suing American Media Incorporated, after The National Enquirer had claimed she was cheating on then-paramour Timberlake.

During 1992, Diaz featured in a soft-core Sadomasochism video entitled "She's No Angel" filmed by photographer John Rutter. During 2003, she won an injunction against Rutter preventing him from distributing the video or accompanying photographs, but during 2004, the video was distributed online by a Russian internet website.

When Diaz was asked if she can speak Spanish she said:

“

I go, 'God, you know, it all sounds so familiar. I know what you're saying, I really do. I just cannot respond to you back in Spanish. I can barely speak English properly.' I didn't grow up in a Cuban community. I grew up in Southern California on the beach, basically. And I'm third generation. I'm of Cuban descent.

”

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.^{[citation needed]}

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, her father, Emilio Diaz, died of pneumonia, aged 58.