Cameron Diaz has spoken out about why she decided to retire from Hollywood, saying that she wanted to learn how to be “self-sufficient” again.
Sitting down with Gwyneth Paltrow for a video interview with Goop, Diaz opened up about why she wanted to hit pause on her acting career to focus on herself.
“I just decided that I wanted different things out of my life,” Diaz revealed. “You know, I’d gone so hard for so long, working, you know, making films and it’s such a grind, and I didn’t really make any space for my personal life.”
Chatting about what it was like to be an actress in Hollywood, she noted that “it’s so intense to work at that level and be that public and put yourself out there”.
And according to Diaz, when you’re working on a film, the people in the industry “own you”, adding, “You’re there 12 hours a day for months on end. You have no time for anything else”.
“Actors are infantilised, you know?” she continued. “We’re put in a position where everything’s taken care of for us.”
“You know, you go to set, everybody wants to carry your bag and put you in—you know, you’re not allowed to do anything. God forbid something happens to you, then they can’t finish making the movie and you’re already on film, and you know, insurance days and like all of these things.”
The Charlie’s Angels actress then admitted that she wanted to learn how to stand on her own two feet again. “I got a peace in my soul, because I finally was taking care of myself,” she admitted.
“I really needed to know that I could take care of myself, and that I knew how to be an adult and I knew how to, you know, 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 put together, not how other people thought it should go,” she stated.
After deciding to leave her acting career behind, she decided to focus on nurturing her relationships with friends, family and her now-husband Benji Madden, who welcomed their daughter Raddix, in January 2020.
“We went hard for a few years where we just like ironed it out and hacked it out, and it was a lot of work but it was really you know, we had to,” she admitted about her marriage.
“I’m older than him, but not so much older, but he was at the place in his life too where he wanted to do [have children] as well,” she added.
During their conversation, Diaz went on to discuss motherhood and credited Paltrow for encouraging her to be a mother.
“I would not have become a mother if it wasn’t for you,” Diaz told Paltrow. “You used to talk, I’d be like: ‘I’m not having kids.’ And you’re like: ‘You are having kids, you’re getting married, you’re having children.'”
“And I was like: ‘No, I’m not!’ And you’re like: ‘You have to do it, you have to!’ And I was like: ‘I’m not gonna do it.'”
“You were just on me all the time. You were like: ‘You have to. You don’t understand. If you don’t do this you will be so sad that you didn’t do it.’ And so, I credit you so much with the fact that you never let up on me.”
