Lights, Cameron, action! - actress Cameron Diaz - Interview

Cameron Diaz auditioned for a bit part in The Mask and won the lead female role of a shady nightclub chanteuse. She isn't a star yet, but since her lustrous comic performance in the film is close to heavenly, she soon will be

Screenwriters extinguish their God-given hostility with Prozac. Studio execs chant for box-office hits in Buddhist ashrams. Hot young agents sweep up the streets of South Central. Models-turned-actresses--among whom Cameron Diaz is this year's, er, model--order avocado-and-bacon burgers without missing a beat. We're several exits past the cliches of Hollywood.

On a fetid June day, at an all-vinyl coffee shop in suburban Burbank called the Five Horsemen (I like to think, "of the Apocalypse"), amid shrieking, leather-faced retirees, Diaz explained how she went in for a small part in a big picture and came out with the big one. At twenty-one, she's "a good kid" (in the words of one of her associates) who happens to look like a terrifyingly beautiful '70s French art-movie star and who plays a passenger in the new Jim Carrey vehicle, The Mask--a Looney Tunes superhero story, completed by a cartoonish girl who turns out to be the real thing. Huh.

CAMERON DIAZ: Maybe I should attach your microphone to my shirt.

LAUREN OLIVER: I'm glad you're working with me on this.

CD: Voila.

LO: You're an overnight success in a movie starring an overnight success. Of course, that's not true.

CD: Bam! All of a sudden people say, "She's got tits and legs and blond hair. Let's talk to her!" I've been paying my dues for years in modeling. Not only that, it took a month and a half of Chuck Russell, The Mask's director, and Jim Carrey trying to get New Line to say O.K. on me. I didn't sleep; I had an ulcer. Of course, when people talk of paying their dues, they mean years of going to acting school and auditioning--

LO: --and waitressing.

CD: Right. Whatever success people have in a field, it's a result of hard work. If you ultimately succeed in one place, you must have worked hard there or somewhere else.

LO: So you modeled for five years. You must have started when you were . . .

CD: Sixteen.

LO: You were supposed to be out getting your driver's license and getting into trouble.

CD: I grew up in Long Beach, California. I did all my heavy partying before I turned sixteen. My father always said, "When you get your license, don't drink and drive, because you are responsible." I drove this big fucking VW bus and piled ten kids in the back of it but I wasn't going to be responsible for killing ten of my closest friends.

LO: So you finished your childhood in the modeling industry. Where'd you go?

CD: Australia. Morocco. Paris. Mexico. Here, there, everywhere. My first destination was Japan. I went with a girlfriend who was fifteen and had been there several times before. She was sort of my chaperon. My parents trusted that she knew what she was doing.

LO: [look of horror]

CD: "Oh, Mom, Dad--it's super safe." Believe me, you can get into a lot of trouble being sixteen years old in a foreign country with no adult telling you when to come home.

LO: What's the worst that can happen when you throw a kid from Long Beach into an international scene full of rich, drug-taking adults?

CD: The difference is knowing what is right and what is wrong. And people who want to get you to believe what's wrong is right can. They know how. I don't care how smart a kid you are. The only way you learn what's not right is from experience.

LO: Modeling must make the film industry look easy.

CD: It's all about looks. For a year, I was really fucked-up about it. No one tells you: "Don't worry, you're going to go on a hundred castings and maybe get one." People who don't know who they are can all of a sudden go, Shit! Who am I? They try to become something they feel people want.

LO: L.A. is the most self-conscious place on earth.

CD: I knew I wasn't the prettiest girl. But I would go in and have a great time with the clients. I made them laugh.

LO: In the movies, nobody is going to hire anybody they don't like unless they're forced to. There's no room for wild, hysterical abandon when you've got thirty million bucks on the line. It's cash registers, not casting couches.

CD: I know I've never been in that situation. Every casting director I've met is a woman. I've met producers who said: "I won't be in a room with you unless another woman is there." The people who are victims of casting couches let themselves get into a situation. Maybe that's unfair, but powerful people don't have to play those games.

LO: It probably happens more at, like, restaurants in deep Kansas.

CD: Some guy gives a girl the idea that if she hangs out with him, she'll meet important people, get jobs. That's an exchange.

LO: Who else was up for your role in The Mask?

CD: They had three names in mind.

LO: Such as?

CD: I don't know; they wouldn't tell me. It's not really important, though. Chuck said, "Do exactly what you were doing the entire time in your auditions. Don't do anything different." Now I'm doing more readings, and I'm finding that's really sort of rare. In fact, if I had known what I know now, I probably wouldn't have gotten the part. When I go and read for a casting director, that's not how I'm going to act it out in the film. There's so much more to it.