For the past four years, Cameron Diaz has been living her best life being a wife, a mother to her two-year-old daughter, and creating her own wine brand Avaline. However, a Netflix movie with her former Annie co-star Jamie Foxx pulled her out of retirement and set the stage for the next big move in her life. Before she officially gets back to filming, the San Diego native has explained why she took a break from acting and what she missed the most about it.
Cameron Diaz has been an actress ever since she made her debut at the age of 21 playing Tina Carlyle in 1994’s The Mask. When you’ve been in the Hollywood spotlight for so long, it can make any actor want to re-define themselves and their future. In an interview with CBS Mornings, Diaz spoke about why she took a "step back."
When you’re doing something that you know and you’ve done well and you know how it works and it’s consumed your whole life for so long, it’s kind of a nice thing to kind of go, ‘You know what? Let me just step back for a second, take a look at what, you know, the whole picture looks like for me and what are the things that I could do better and be more engaged with that would make me feel more whole.’ And I did that.
There was a time when Diaz didn’t know if she had what it took to be in movies anymore. When you've spent the past four years with a whole new life, you may not think there is any reason to leave it. The 49-year-old star felt like she wanted to focus all of her attention on her loving family instead of being in front of a camera. Her daughter Maddix is still little, and she wanted to be able to spend the time engaging with her family and facets that made her "feel more whole."
While Cameron Diaz has realized a lot of important stuff about what she wants while parenting Maddix, she is very food at acting and was the highest paid actress over 40 when she previously "retired" from work. But she did admit in the CBS interview that she did miss acting, even whilst on a break.
I mean, I miss aspects of acting, or making movies. Yeah, making movies is a particular skill set that is fun to exercise and be a part of. But, yeah, life is – it’s a different lifestyle, and you kind of have to be ready to do that.
I do get it. Dividing your time being on and off set can be a constant struggle when you are in the entertainment business. Diaz continued to speak on why she took an extended break -- and referred to herself as retired -- and it had to do with the universal struggle of giving 100% effort in your life.
Everybody only has 100 percent, and you always have to figure out how you’re going to divide that 100 percent to spread it to all the parts of your life that matter.
Luckily, Netflix subscribers will have a chance to see Cameron Diaz shine once again to co-star in Netflix's Back in Action. An ironic film title for someone who is stepping out of retirement to come back to. We have no idea when it will hit Netflix or what the film is even about, but we can expect it to be an action-comedy as Horrible Bosses’ Seth Gordon will be directing as well as co-writing the script with Neighbors’ Brendan O’Brien. If we’re going to thank anybody for encouraging the My Sister’s Keeper star to come back to acting, the idea was allegedly from her husband, Joel Madden. So, it’s nice to know that the family she wanted to stick around for actually pushed her to make a cinematic comeback.
While Cameron Diaz is reportedly feeling anxiously excited about her comeback to movies, but I'm genuinely pumped for what's next for her. Stay up-to-date with the Netflix schedule so that you’ll be the first to know when Back in Action will premiere on Netflix.
