Many were jealous to the point of fury when Cameron Diaz made her film debut in the high-budget Jim Carrey vehicle, The Mask. Here’s another good-looking bit of fluff stealing another prime role, it was said - she’s all face’n’figure, no acting ability at all. Such accusations have been made about many an actress who's gone on to prove herself as a serious professional. They've even been made about actresses who were serious professionals already. Just because a performer's beautiful it doesn't mean she hasn't won a scholarship to the Actors' Studio and starved off-Broadway for fifteen years.
Thing is, in the case of Cameron Diaz, those enraged attackers were pretty much correct. Before her debut, there’d been no acting classes, no honing of her skills in repertory, no years of rejection. She was a successful model, and there can be no doubt that her looks played a huge part in winning her the role in The Mask. What’s incredible about Diaz is not the story we don’t know - that hoary old tale of the building of knowledge and experience - it’s the story we do know. For this model, this complete non-actor was actually excellent in The Mask. Beyond this, within two years she was starring opposite Harvey Keitel, within three she was alongside Julia Roberts, within five it was Al Pacino. And, miraculously, she more than held her own beside all three. Immediately, somehow, she was a world-class screen actress, a complete natural, a freak of cinematic nature.
Cameron Diaz was born on the 30th of August, 1972, in San Diego, California. Her father, Emilio Diaz, was a second generation Cuban American and worked as a foreman for an oil company. Her mother, Billie, was an import/export broker of English, German and Native American descent (a complex blend of bloodlines that helps to explain Cameron's outrageous good looks). There was also an older sister, Chimene.
The family Diaz moved up the coast when Cameron was young. She attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School, former alumni including John Wayne (for one year) and Snoop Doggy Dogg. An eclectic mix, for sure, and probably not one of which the Duke would have approved. Co-incidentally, being as Cameron would go on to play the owner of an American football team in Any Given Sunday, Long Beach Poly has produced more NFL players than any other school in the nation. Also co-incidentally, part of The Insider, starring Al Pacino, Cameron's co-star in Any Given Sunday, was shot at the school (as were the classroom scenes in American Pie).
Cameron grew up in a two-storey, gray stucco house in Long Beach, famously one of America's largest shipping ports - the Queen Mary has been moored in the harbour since 1967. The population was young, as were Cameron's parents who had a definite laissez-faire attitude to their children. They'd take their daughters with them to parties, where their friends would treat the kids as adults - consequently they matured fast.
Cameron recalls school being fairly rough, remembering her father's advice that, should anyone challenge her to an after-school fight, she had to tell them she couldn't wait, she wanted to kick their ass right there and then. Tall and skinny from an early age, she was nicknamed Skeletor and hung out with the older kids. Hoping to become a zoologist, she kept two snakes, one of which grew to six and a half feet, and she bred mice to feed them (there were also the usual cats and dogs - NOT to feed to the snakes, you understand). Precocious and, by her own admission, not a little brattish, she was out driving with her first boyfriend, Lawrence May, when his Skylark pulled up alongside a Pacer. Diaz remembers telling him "If that Pacer beats us, I'm never going out with you again. I'm also going to tell everyone in school". As far as style went, Cameron was a rocker. She loved Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Whitesnake and, especially Ratt. She saw Metallica four times and her first gig, to which she was taken by her mother, was by Van Halen. Even now she says "If you really want to torture me, sit me in a room, strapped to a chair and put Mariah Carey on". With her poodle-hair, she'd dance at half-time at school football games.
Graduating from High School in 1990, she went to work in Japan. Such was her parents' trust in her that her sole companion was a 15-year-old fellow model. The pair shared a two-bedroom apartment. Four blocks away, Cameron was pleased to find, was a building containing seven nightclubs - she says she spent much time riding that elevator
