Cameron Diaz's Stunning Transformation

When applied to various celebrities, the phrase "so and so needs no introduction" tends to be overused. However, in some situations, it simply applies. That is undoubtedly the case with Cameron Diaz, who's been one of Hollywood's most beloved actors since making her film debut in the mid-1990s. With more than 40 films to her credit, Diaz has also been among the most bankable stars in movie history; the cumulative box office from the movies in which she's appeared is in excess of $5.5 billion. 

Interestingly, one of filmdom's most successful and recognizable female actors had no ambitions to be an actor. It's accurate to say that acting is something she fell into and, with no experience whatsoever, utterly excelled at. So how did a model who'd never acted wind up nominated for four Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a BAFTA? The answer to that question is at the heart of an amazing journey that is far from over. To find out more, read on to experience Diaz's stunning transformation.

Diaz was born in 1972, drawing her first breath in the California city of San Diego. Growing up in Long Beach, it's accurate to say that there was no silver spoon in her mouth. "We weren't privileged — very much the opposite," she recalled in an interview with Britain's Stella magazine (via SBS News). "My family would collect [soda] cans to turn in for extra money, because $20 meant something to us." As a teenager, she attended the same high school as another future star, rapper Snoop Dogg. "She was a cheerleader, and she was very well loved and received," the rapper recalled during an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show."

When Diaz was 16, she was discovered by photographer Jeff Dunas, which led the Elite modeling agency to sign her. "She had a sparkle," Dunas told People. Her parents, somewhat dubious about that world, insisted that she finish high school — which she did. After graduating, her modeling career took her to far-flung locales such as Paris and Japan; among the brands she modeled for were Nivea, Coca-Cola, Levi's, and Calvin Klein. In 1990, she appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine. Ironically, she actually was 17 at the time. 

Diaz was in the midst of a burgeoning modeling career when, at 21, her agent at Elite suggested she audition for an upcoming film starring comedy sensation Jim Carrey. Despite having zero acting experience, Diaz won the role — the female lead opposite Carrey in the 1994 comedy "The Mask." "I got this part by the skin of my teeth, because I was a model, and nobody knew who I was, and I was not an actress," Diaz said in an interview with Vogue. "So there was no reason for anybody to hire me."

Making the leap from model to actor was a heady experience. During a junket interview for "The Mask," Diaz was asked whether it was different seeing herself on the big screen than on a magazine cover. "Yeah, there's a huge ... 12 feet is basically the difference," she joked, via Reelin' in the Years Productions. 

"The Mask" proved to be a monster hit, raking in more than $350 million worldwide. Despite her inexperience, her personality shone through. "Cameron Diaz is a true discovery in the film, a genuine sex bomb with a gorgeous face, a wonderful smile, and a gift of comic timing," wrote influential film critic Roger Ebert in his review. Suddenly, the little-known model had become a legit movie star, a literal overnight sensation who was suddenly on Hollywood's radar.

Thanks to the success of "The Mask," and the positive reviews of her first acting role, modeling quickly fell by the wayside as Diaz pursued an acting career. The first opportunity she jumped on was a starring role in the 1995 ensemble comedy "The Last Supper." She followed that by landing further big roles in small films, including "She's the One," "Feeling Minnesota," and "Head Above Water." That all led to Diaz being cast in a supporting role in a big movie, playing the bride in "My Best Friend's Wedding."

In the beloved 1997 rom-com, Julia Roberts (whose transformation has stunned just about everyone) portrayed a woman who's been secretly carrying a flame for her best friend (Dermot Mulroney), and hatches a plan to sabotage his wedding to Diaz's character. "I got to work with these folks and Julia. It was, like, a huge break for me," Diaz told Entertainment Weekly of being cast in the film, which earned an impressive $127M at the box office. 

The film's success propelled Diaz another rung higher in the Hollywood ladder. "People all of a sudden knew my name. That was a trippy thing," Diaz told Nylon. That led her to be cast in a leading role in the 1998 comedy "There's Something About Mary." Playing the title character opposite Ben Stiller, Diaz demonstrated solid comedy chops in the fall-down-funny flick. The film was a blockbuster, and "Mary" catapulted Diaz from Hollywood up-and-comer to bona fide movie stardom. 

By the late 1990s, Diaz was no longer described as a model-turned-actor, yet the flair for comedy she'd continually demonstrated led her to be cast in a succession of comedic roles. In 1999, however, Diaz showcased more aspects of her talent when she delivered dramatic performances in two very different films that year: director Spike Jonze's unabashedly weird "Being John Malkovich" and Oliver Stone's gritty football film "Any Given Sunday."

In "Being John Malkovich," Diaz flipped her sex-symbol persona upside down with the role of Lotte, replete with frizzy red wig and fake teeth. As film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review, the drop-dead gorgeous Diaz "looks so dowdy we hardly recognize her." "We had so much fun making this movie," Diaz told Vogue. "I had my brown contacts, I had my teeth, I had my wig, I had everything and I was just so content as Lotte."

Released later that same year, "Any Given Sunday" featured Diaz as the cutthroat owner of a professional football team, part of a sprawling cast that included Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, and Ann-Margaret. For Diaz, the experience of making those two films was like night and day. "'With 'Malkovich' it was like working with a smaller, more intimate group of people, just being the four of us for the most part," she told Nylon. And then on Oliver's it was like 30 people on the cast ... That was a real challenge."

If 1999 was a good year for Diaz's Hollywood career, 2000 saw her hit it out of the park with "Charlie's Angels." The truth about Diaz's friendship with Drew Barrymore is that they'd known each other for years before teaming up with Lucy Liu for a big-screen remake of the 1970s TV hit. With a budget of more than $90 million, the action-packed "Charlie's Angels" was the biggest movie that Diaz had ever worked on. 

It was also the first time Diaz had done an action movie with stunts, which required significant preparation. "So we trained basically seven days a week, eight hours a day for three months to learn our kung fu," Diaz told Vogue. The physical transformation that she experienced became apparent in other aspects of her life. "All of a sudden I was strong and capable," she added. "And that was like, my journey out to starting to just, you know, take care of my body and the strength in it." 

The film was a big hit and spawned a sequel, 2003's "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle." In addition to being a big contributor to her burgeoning career, the films also bonded the three co-stars into lifelong friends. "The reason we are such good friends is because it's real and we go through real stuff with each other," Barrymore said when she, Diaz, and Liu reunited on an episode of her daytime talk show (via Entertainment Weekly). "It's not a Hollywood fairy tale."

Diaz made her foray into voice acting in the 2001 animated comedy "Shrek," playing a fairytale princess who transforms into an ogre due to a curse. The film was a massive hit, bringing in nearly  half a billion at the box office, and spawning one of Hollywood's most successful franchises — responsible for $4 billion in ticket sales, to say nothing of ancillary revenue streams from merchandising.

It's fair to say that Diaz, who's been open about her lifelong struggles with acne, enjoyed the experience of acting off-camera. "It's great," she told Contactmusic (via DigitalSpy). "I don't have to worry about my skin or my figure."

She followed up "Shrek" with more big movies, with highlights including the Tom Cruise-starring "Vanilla Sky," director Martin Scorsese's gritty "Gangs of New York," and the beloved holiday rom-com "The Holiday." By 2003, Diaz had become Hollywood's highest-paid female actor; in 2001 alone, she earned a staggering $41 million, and estimates put her salary for "Shrek 2" between $10 to $15 million. Less than a decade after making her film debut, Diaz had established herself as one of Hollywood's hottest stars.

In 2003, Diaz began dating singer-actor Justin Timberlake. By 2005, the pair were one of Hollywood's hottest power couples when the National Enquirer ran a story claiming that she'd cheated on Timberlake, a former member of NSYNC, before the boy band broke up.

While many celebrities let fake tabloid stories roll off them like water off the proverbial duck's back, Diaz did not. Instead, she hired a lawyer and sued the Enquirer for a whopping $50 million over false claims that she'd been having an affair with TV producer Shane Nickerson. While Diaz insisted the photos of her and Nickerson had simply been friends hugging goodbye after a meeting, the supermarket tabloid vociferously defended its account. "We stand by our story and the accuracy of our photos and will defend it aggressively," read a statement from an Enquirer spokesperson, via Entertainment Weekly.

By the time the case was finally settled in 2007, Diaz and Timberlake had already broken up. As The Hollywood Reporter reported, the suit was settled out of court, with Diaz awarded an undisclosed settlement that was described as "substantial." In addition, the Enquirer also "apologized unreservedly" for its actions. The tabloid's attorney, Sam Howard, confirmed that the Enquirer "entirely accepts that the allegations were without foundation and ought never to have been published."

During the latter half of the 2000s, Diaz's already-hot Hollywood career continued heating up. Highlights included her turn as a profanity-spewing, morally bankrupt educator in "Bad Teacher," the rom-com "Sex Tape," and — of course — those lucrative "Shrek" sequels. 

In 2013, The Hollywood Reporter ran an article declaring Diaz the highest-paid female actor over 40. The reason for that, as the outlet pointed out, was that she'd cut some creative Hollywood deals in which she exchanged her upfront salary (said to be $15 million per film) for a piece of the back-end profits. As a result, she'd reportedly earned $42 million from "Bad Teacher," and had structured a similar deal for "Sex Tape." 

During the course of her Hollywood career, Diaz was romantically linked not just to Justin Timberlake, but also to actors Jared Leto and Matt Dillon (her co-star in "There's Something About Mary"). Her dating days came to an end in May 2014 when she met Benji Madden, the frontman of the rock band Good Charlotte. Things moved quickly; they got engaged a mere seven months later and then tied the knot in January 2015.

A few years later, the couple started a family. They welcomed daughter Raddix in December of 2019 and son Cardinal in 2024. As for why she'd waited until her 40s to get married, she offered a candid answer when she appeared onstage at Gwyneth Paltrow's In Goop Health wellness summit. "I think it's a matter of I just hadn't met my husband," she said, as reported by People. "I had boyfriends before, and there's a really, really distinct difference between husbands and boyfriends ... He's just my partner in life, in everything." 

The beginning of Diaz's relationship with Benji Madden coincided with a big life change. After appearing in the 2014 remake of the musical "Annie," Diaz stepped away from Hollywood, something that Diaz's friend and co-star in "The Sweetest Thing," Selma Blair, revealed. "I would have liked to do a sequel but Cameron's retired from acting, she's like 'I'm done,'" Blair, who'd recently had lunch with Diaz, told the Daily Mail in 2018. "'I mean, she doesn't need to make any more films, she has a pretty great life, I don't know what it would take to bring her back." Blair, however, quickly backtracked when she tweeted (via UPI), "Guys please, I was making a joke in an interview. CAMERON DIAZ is NOT retiring from ANYTHING. And for more breaking news: I am NOW retiring from being Cameron Diaz's spokesperson."

Yet Blair hadn't been joking. Diaz had indeed pressed the pause button on her career, eschewing acting to focus on other priorities — primarily motherhood and her young daughter. At that point, money was no longer a motivating factor; the little girl who'd once gathered up soda cans for spare change was reportedly worth an estimated $140 million. 

In a subsequent 2018 interview with Variety, Diaz confirmed Blair's reports of her retirement. "I'm literally doing nothing," she said, adding, "I am actually retired ..." 

During her decade-long self-imposed exile from Hollywood, Diaz didn't entirely retreat from the spotlight. Instead, she recalibrated her career, transforming from actor to author and wellness expert with the 2014 publication of her first book, "The Body Book." Co-authored by Sandra Bark, Diaz told USA Today that the purpose of her book was to encourage women to "stop hating their bodies, understand them, take care of their bodies and put that energy that they would be turning on themselves in a negative way out to the world in a positive way." 

Diaz followed that up with her second release, "The Longevity Book." Subtitled "The Science of Aging, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time," Diaz shared the lessons that she'd learned about how to grow old gracefully and healthfully.

Diaz also embarked on a new passion: winemaking. In 2018, she began to pursue her interest in winemaking. "I enjoyed wine for many a year," Diaz told Rolling Stone, "but I had no idea of the process." As she and her partner in this endeavor, Katherine Power, began visiting vineyards and gathering research, they decided to launch their own "clean wine" brand, Avaline, made from organically grown grapes, with no additives. "Basically what I'm saying is that Katherine and I started this out of our shared desire for a wine we could feel good about drinking," Diaz added.

In 2024, Diaz spoke at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, revealing the real reason she decided to leave the spotlight. "For me, it was just something I had to do," Diaz said. "It felt like something I had to do to reclaim my own life. And I just really didn't care about anything else."

Two years earlier, however, her "Annie" co-star Foxx posted audio of a telephone conversation he'd had with Diaz, revealing that he'd convinced her to come out of retirement to team up with him for a new movie for Netflix, with production to begin later that year. The film "Back in Action" was released in 2025, an action-comedy in which the two played husband-and-wife CIA operatives who are pulled back into service. Despite being away from film sets for so long, returning to acting in her comeback vehicle proved to be surprisingly effortless for her. "It's like riding a bike, you know what I mean?" Diaz said when interviewed for the "Skip Intro" podcast (via Tudum). "The set was second nature to me."

"Back in Action" was just the beginning of what shaped up to be a full-fledged Hollywood comeback. As of February 2026, upcoming projects for Diaz included reprising Princess Fiona in "Shrek 5," an untitled rom-com, and a new Apple TV film, "Outcome," alongside co-stars Keanu Reeves and Jonah Hill (who also directed). Speaking with "Entertainment Tonight," Diaz reflected on the experience of reuniting with Reeves, 30 years after they'd co-starred in "Feeling Minnesota." "We've known each other over the years," Diaz said, "so to be able to come back to doing a movie together ... I was very excited."