Known for her roles inThere’s Something About Mary,The Mask,My Best Friend’s Wedding,The Holiday,Charlie’s Angels, and more,Cameron Diaz, who retired from acting in 2014, says she endured misogyny in Hollywood for years. Appearing onMichelle Visage’s “Rule Breakers” podcast, she told theRuPaul’s Drag Racejudge that misogyny was a normal part of the industry in the 1990s and 2000s.
“I certainly didn’t do as much as could be done now because of the awareness of everybody, you know, sort of like the #MeToo,” Diaz told Visage on her podcast on International Women’s Day. “There were still parameters. In the 1990s, the early aughts, there was still heavy, heavy misogyny. Just the level of exploitation of powers it just laid on the entire industry. It was the normal thing to do sort of like (laugh) and just be able to get through unscathed.”
Diaz added there was enormous pressure to “be the one who participated enough to make everybody feel taken care of but not to be a victim in that position.” TheShrekactress recalled it was difficult “to know how to navigate the whole thing because it was happening all day, every day in every little feeling of layers of existence.”
Cameron Diaz Calls Fame' Infantilizing'
Diaz also spoke to Visage about her decision to leave acting after her role as Mrs. Hannigan, the mean supervisor of the orphanage in theAnnieremake. The actress starred alongside Quvenzhané Wallis,who played the titular character Annie, andJamie Foxx, who co-starred as Benjamin Stacks, essentially a modernized Daddy Warbucks.
Diaz told Visage: “Fame is very infantilizing. It’s very much about keeping somebody coddled in a state.”
But since quitting Hollywood afterAnniein 2014, the actress also admitted to taking a break from certain societal norms and expectations. “I just go back to the trap of it all, especially in our society, like what we value, what we think is important. I am absolutely a victim of all the societal objectification and exploitations that women are subjected to. I have bought into all of them myself at certain times,” she added.
While many celebrities are selling expensive beauty products, including Diaz’s long-standing friendGwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, that doesn’t seem like it will be in the cards for theShrek 2actor. However, she does run a “clean” wine brand called Avaline—just pour a glass of the wine and settle in with a good book after completing the “Boss Bitch Challenge” for the day.
During the pandemic, Diaz joined Hollywood’s most famous actresses in showing off their fight skills in an Instagram challenge called the “Boss Bitch Challenge,” which was started by stuntwoman Zoë Bell (doubled for Lucy Lawless inXena: Warrior Princess, Uma Therman inKill Bill, Cate Blanchett inThor: Ragnarok). Joining Diaz and Bell in the challenge, they each performed a different stunt on Instagram and created a video, were actresses like Scarlett Johansson, Margot Robbie, and Halle Berry.
