Please Rewind Talent Wall

Cameron Diaz

Cameron Diaz has always been difficult to pin to a single mode. Across comedy, drama, action and animation, she brings an open, energetic screen presence that can turn playful, abrasive or emotionally raw as the movie requires. Born in San Diego on August 30, 1972, Diaz began modeling as a teenager before making her film debut in The Mask without previous acting experience. By the late 1990s, she had become a major comedy presence. There’s Something About Mary placed her at the center of an unusually unruly romantic comedy and earned her a Golden Globe nomination, while her appearance in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas belonged to a very different strain of late-’90s filmmaking. That period also showed how readily Diaz could move away from conventional star packaging. In Being John Malkovich, she played the pet-obsessed wife of an unemployed puppeteer, a performance that brought Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG nominations. The same year, she appeared as football team owner Christina Pagniacci in Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday. Charlie’s Angels gave Diaz an action-comedy showcase alongside Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. She then took a darker turn in Vanilla Sky as the former lover of Tom Cruise’s publishing magnate, earning further supporting-actress nominations. In 2001, she also found one of her defining voice roles as Princess Fiona in Shrek, returning for Shrek 2 in 2004. Between those animated films came Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, in which Diaz played a pickpocket and grifter in the movie’s 19th-century Five Points setting. That run—from There’s Something About Mary through Being John Malkovich, Charlie’s Angels, Vanilla Sky, Shrek and Gangs of New York—captures the range that shaped her career: broad comedy without self-consciousness, heightened genre work and dramatic roles with sharper edges. After stepping away from acting following Annie, Diaz returned in the 2025 action-comedy Back in Action. She is also set to voice Princess Fiona again in Shrek 5.