Cameron Diaz is Back In Action – literally.
Alongside Jamie Foxx, the four-time Golden Globe nominated actress stars in Netflix‘s latest spy-comedy-thriller, which landed on the streaming service just last week – marking her first movie in over a decade.
But why did 52-year-old Diaz take such a lengthy step back from showbiz? And more importantly, what prompted her decision to come back?
Both of these questions the Hollywood heroine answered this week during an exclusive chat with Tyla, where she also spilt the tea on her personal life.
Prior to her latest project – in which she stars as a mother-of-two, who, with her husband, gave up a previous career as a CIA spy after becoming pregnant – Diaz’s last film was released in 2014.
That year, she featured in family musical Annie alongside Foxx – as well as romantic-comedies Sex Tape and The Other Woman – before seemingly disappearing until 2025.
It turns out that, during this time, she and her husband, Good Charlotte‘s Benji Madden, welcomed two beautiful babies in 2019 and 2024.
Apparently, it was the combination of motherhood, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic which gripped the world in 2020, that prompted Diaz to place her movie career.
After a while, she became complacent with the idea of turning down long hours on set, red carpet appearances and award shows.
Speaking to Tyla about her new project Back In Action, and why it served as the perfect opportunity to re-enter the film biz, she explained: “I had legit been taking 10 years off – wasn’t really thinking about doing a film.
Cameron Diaz previously took a 10-year-long break from showbiz (Tristar Media/WireImage)
“But after Covid and wanting to switch things up a little bit, when this script came to me via Jamie’s ask, my husband and I were like, ‘Maybe it’s time to have a little switch up’.
“And I thought, if I’m doing to do any movie at all, it would be with Jamie. Because talent, unmatched. Professionalism, unmatched. Partnership unmatched.”
Adding of the project, Diaz went on to confess: “And if I’m going to leave my house, and leave my family for 10 hours out of the day, I have to have guarantee that it’s going to be with somebody who is worth it.
“So, I said yes.”
Her explanation coincides with a statement she previously made about the gap in her resumé.
Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last year, she admitted: “It felt like something I had to do to reclaim my own life. And I just really didn’t care about anything else.
“Nobody’s opinion, nobody’s success, no one’s offer, no one’s anything could change my mind about my decision of taking care of myself and building the life that I really wanted to have.”
Diaz is also set to appear in Shrek 5 later this year (Tristar Media/WireImage)
The spy comedy isn’t the only project on Diaz’s roster this year, however, and it has since been confirmed by Dreamworks that she’s set to reprise her role as Princess Fiona for the fifth Shrek movie in the coming months.
Asked about her involvement, the actress told Tyla: “I mean, it’s Shrek 5. I don’t even know what the script is – I haven’t seen it, I don’t know what we’re doing – I’m just going to go back and be Fiona.
“I don’t say, ‘No’, to Fiona! Right?”
And spilling some behind the scenes goss, she went on to admit: “I’ve never known what the script is. I go in on the day that I’m recording, they give me a bunch of lines, and they say, ‘This is what you’re saying today’, and I go, ‘Oh, okay’.
“Honestly, the first Shrek, I just said the lines as they were. I didn’t even know what the story was. I never read the script. I never saw – all the way until the end. I think probably the first three recordings I made were, like, the film.”
