Interview: Cameron Diaz

Jun 26 2009 by The Journal

AFTER years of playing the ditzy blonde known for having one of the broadest smiles in Hollywood, Cameron Diaz is moving on.

Following roles in comedies such as Charlie’s Angels and last year’s What Happens In Vegas, she admits that it was new territory acting in the big-screen adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s heart-wrenching novel My Sister’s Keeper.

Reflecting on her portrayal of mother Sara Fitzgerald, whose child is dying from leukaemia, she explains that she had to grow into the role.

“There was a certain level of maturity that had to come with playing this role, that I think I had to step up to, which I was happy and thankful for,” she says, picking her words carefully.

Playing Fitzgerald, as she is sued by the daughter she chose to have by IVF in order to be a donor for her first child, was a “touchy” role to take on, but she felt ready for it: “It was a nice stepping stone in the experience of life.”

Casting the 36-year-old – who is single after a string of boyfriends including Justin Timberlake – as a mother of three teenage kids is an unusual choice for any director, but Nick Cassavetes, who won critical acclaim for 2004’s The Notebook, thought otherwise.

He picked her precisely because she had done so little drama, saying: “I really didn’t want to cast an actress who had done something similar for this film.” And Cameron hasn’t let him down. She speaks so passionately about her character, it’s easy to see she put a lot of herself into the film.

“I feel like Sara is a warrior,” she gushes. “She doesn’t have a moment not to be vigilant.

“She has a child who’s dying and she has been through a decade of this vigilance.

“But she has such an intense focus that there wasn’t really any room for anything else in her life. And I found that made it easier for me to just keep going.”

To research the role, Cameron met mothers with sick children who were going through Sara’s experience.

“No matter what the circumstances were, they all said that there’s just not a moment that you aren’t focused on keeping your child alive.

“Whether it’s reading the charts to make sure that the doctors are doing their job, or thinking, ‘If this treatment doesn’t work, what’s the next treatment’?

“All these responsibilities the mothers take on, and everybody else in the family suffers. This is the thing with families who have a member who has special needs, everybody else’s needs go to the wayside.

“What’s so wonderful with this film is that you see how it’s not one person’s story – it’s not just a mother losing a daughter, it’s a sister losing a sister or a brother losing a sister, a family losing their family together, all of them suffering separately as well as together.”

In this age of test tube babies, the film also throws up the moral quandary of whether it’s right to have a child as an organ donor for a sick sibling. Cameron says she didn’t make the film as a “moral statement” and that in her discussions with parents, the unanimous answer was that it would be a “tough decision to make”.

“But, ultimately, you cannot make the decision to let a child die. It goes against every fibre of a parent.”

It’s pretty heavy stuff and Cameron is clearly quite emotional, the smile’s faded, so it’s time for a lighter question.

She seems to have ignored the old adage about never working with animals and children. But Cameron doesn’t bite. Instead, she’s full of praise for her young co-stars, who she calls “total pros”. Cameron gets an equally glowing report from them. They say she took on a motherly role on set and off set, making snacks for the cast in her trailer.

California-born Cameron grew up on the golden beaches of San Diego and became a model after leaving high school at 16.

She got her first acting break at 21, when she auditioned for The Mask without any formal training. But it was the 1998 comedy There’s Something About Mary, alongside Ben Stiller, that would make her name as a comic actress.

Over the next 10 years, she worked her way up to become the highest-paid woman in Hollywood, raking in $15m (£9.1m) a movie, and one of the most written about. Her personal life has been widely documented, especially her rocky relationship with pop star Timberlake from 2004 to 2007, and when her father died of pneumonia in April last year, during filming.

Today, she’s passionate about her family – and says the film echoes her bond with her older sister Chimene.

“It’s one of the most intense bonds, being with somebody from the time you enter the world and being that close to one another.”

She recently said she wouldn’t rule out having children of her own one day, but for now she’s happy just to be an aunt.