Cameron Diaz, once the highest paid actress on the planet, hasn’t been in a new movie since the release of Annie in December 2014. It looks like it will remain that way for at least the foreseeable future.
The 48-year-old actress (who you’re free to reference as a Hollywood legend if you so choose) talked to Yahoo Finance Presents in an interview that was released this week. During that exchange she said she doesn’t see herself re-entering the grueling industry of film while she’s in this phase of her family life. For reference, she and her husband since 2015, Benji Madden of Good Charlotte fame, had their daughter Raddix in December 2019.
Diaz says that she first observed how difficult it would be to split time as a mom and a person working in movies when she watched a producer friend who started a family of her own.
“Her family started to evolve and I saw her go like, ‘Oh, wait, I only have 100 percent.’ You only have 100 percent, we don’t have two 100 percent, we have 100 percent. Right? So you’ve got to break up that 100 percent,” she said. “How much are you going to give to your family? How much are you going to give to your career?”
Diaz, who still makes money as an author, investor, and co-founder of her own wine label, further explained why the acting window is closed for now. Continuing on that percentage theme, she said she used to give moviemaking 100 percent of her energy. That’s no longer an option.
“So it’s just a different time in my life now. Now I’m here and this is the most fulfilling thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. “[To] have a family and be married and have our little nucleus of a family. It’s just completely the best thing. So I can’t give...I don’t have what it takes to give making a movie what it needs to be made. All of my energy is here.”
In the meantime, she’s got a big library. Feel free to watch There’s Something About Mary, or Shrek, or Being John Malkovich, or Any Given Sunday Shrek 2 and check back, I don’t know, at some point in the future.
