Cameron Diaz

Cameron Diaz

Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) in San Diego, California is a four-time Golden Globe nominated Americanactress and former fashion model. She is well known for her roles in blockbuster movies such as The Mask, There's Something About Mary, My Best Friend's Wedding, Charlie's Angels, Shrek, Gangs Of New York, The Sweetest Thing, and In Her Shoes. Diaz is the second of two actresses (the other being Julia Roberts) to join the coveted "$20 Million Club" after receiving this salary for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

Biography

Early life

Diaz was born in San Diego, California. Her second-generation Cuban-American^[1] father, Emilio Diaz, worked as a foreman for an oil company, and her mother, Billie Early (who has English, German and Cherokee Native American ancestry^[2][3][4][5]), worked as an exporting agent. Diaz attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School at the same time of rapper Snoop Dogg. During her school days, she was called Skeletor by her classmates because she was so thin.

Career

At age 17, she began her career as a fashion model. Diaz signed with top modeling agency, Elite Model Management. After graduating from high school, she went to work in Japan and met video director Carlo de la Torre. On her return to America, she moved in with him. For the next few years, her modeling took her around the world, working for contracts with major companies. She modelled for designers such as Calvin Klein and Levi's. She also graced the cover of the July 1990 issue of Seventeen magazines.

At the age of 21, Diaz auditioned for the Jim Carrey film The Mask. Even though she had no previous acting experience,^[6] she was cast as the female lead. She signed up for acting lessons right after getting the part. Over the next three years, she won roles in low-budget, independent films, such as The Last Supper, Feeling Minnesota, and She's The One.

She then regained mainstream success with her roles in My Best Friend's Wedding and There's Something About Mary. She won critical acclaim for her performance in Being John Malkovich, which earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the BAFTA Awards and the SAG Awards.

Cameron Diaz with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, photo by Rita Molnár

During the 1999-2000 period, Diaz starred in many films, such as Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, A Life Less Ordinary, Any Given Sunday, and the hit adaptation of Charlie's Angels. In 2001, she won nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards and the AFI Awards for Vanilla Sky, and also voiced Princess Fiona in Shrek, for which she earned $10 million. In 2003, Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese’s epic Gangs of New York, and became the second actress (after Wedding costar Julia Roberts) to earn $20 million for a role, receiving the sum for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. After Full Throttle, Diaz only appeared in three films, Shrek 2, In Her Shoes and The Holiday .

During 2004 and early 2005, Diaz explored some of the environmentally unique locations on the planet while discovering ways to help preserve them for the 10-episode MTV series Trippin’ which featured numerous celebrities and friends of Diaz, such as Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Mark Hoppus, Eva Mendes and Justin Timberlake.

Diaz was mentioned regularly in British comedy series Bo' Selecta, being referred to lovingly as 'Cameron Up-Diaz', and is credited as having appeared in one episode in 2003.^{[citation needed]}