If you've been waiting for another Cameron Diaz movie.... well, you probably stopped holding your breath a long time ago. Diaz's most recent movie was 2014's Annie, and since then, she's thrown in the acting towel to focus on other ventures and her personal life. Unlike some stars, who don't talk publicly about where they stand in their careers, Diaz has spoken out in a lot of interviews about her decision to stop acting. But, she's also made clear that she isn't necessarily retired from entertainment permanently.
Read on to see what Diaz has said about stepping away from her career and to find out what else she's been up to over the past eight years.
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The last year she acted was a big one for her.
Jaguar PS / ShutterstockIn 2014, the last year Diaz appeared in a film, she was in three of them: The Other Woman, Sex Tape, and Annie. Since Annie was the last one released, her final onscreen appearance was as the musical's Miss Hannigan.
Up until that point, Diaz had acted consistently ever since her first role opposite Jim Carrey in 1994's The Mask. Her biggest hits include My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), Charlie's Angels (2000) and its sequels, and The Holiday (2006).
She wanted more control over her own life.
Peacock / YouTubeDiaz has made clear in multiple interviews that she didn't stop acting because she no longer enjoyed it but because being an actor at her level meant she had to relinquish control of certain aspects of her life.
"I just realized that I looked around and it was just, like, so many parts of my life that I wasn't touching and that I wasn't managing," Diaz told actor Kevin Hart on his show Hart to Heart last year. "And I couldn't really manage it, because it was so big. Everything was so massive." She continued, "I just really wanted to make my life manageable by me. My routine in a day is literally what I can manage to do by myself … It's the best feeling. I feel whole."
Similarly, Diaz told Gwyneth Paltrow in a 2020 interview, "I needed to become self-sufficient again. I really needed to know that I could take care of myself and that I knew how to be an adult. And that I knew how to navigate the world of the complexity of being an adult and having responsibility, and putting all the pieces of my life together the way that I wanted it to be."
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She's been putting more focus on her personal life.
Donato Sardella/Getty Images for REVOLVEThe same year that Diaz stopped acting, she started dating her husband, musician Benji Madden. The two wed in 2015, and welcomed their daughter, Raddix, in 2019.
"I met my husband. We started a family," Diaz told Hart of prioritizing her personal life. "All those things that I didn't have time for before—and didn't not just not have the time for, but didn't have the space to make the right decisions for me at the time to bring that in."
In a 2021 interview on SiriusXM with Bruce Bozzi (via E! News), Diaz also talked about being able to focus more on being a mother. "I couldn't imagine, being a mom now, where I'm at as a mother with my child at her first year, to have to be on a movie set that takes 14 hours, 16 hours of my day away from my child. I just couldn't."
She's still staying busy, however.
Kathy Hutchins / ShutterstockEven though Diaz isn't acting, that doesn't mean she hasn't been working. In 2020, she co-founded the wine brand Avaline. "It's nice to be able to contribute and be a part of creating something and putting some a product into the world that I'm really proud of and that I really believe in," Diaz told ABC Audio. She added that she also appreciates the venture because it "doesn't require [her] to be away from home for months on end, 16-hour days."
The star has also released two health and wellness books: The Body Book in 2013 and The Longevity Book in 2016.
She hasn't ruled out acting again.
Albert L. Ortega/Getty ImagesDiaz hasn't denied that she'll ever make a return to the big screen, but she has said that she hasn't felt the urge to do so just yet.
"The way I look at it is that I’ve given more than half of my life to the public," she told InStyle in 2019. "I feel it’s OK for me to take time for myself now to reorganize and choose how I want to come [back] into the world. If I decide to. I don’t miss performing."
The next year, in an interview with Naomi Campbell, Diaz further explained, "There's no part of me that's like, 'I gotta get in front of a camera!' I don't feel that way—and that's not to say I won't some day. But I'm really resolved at where I'm at right now."
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