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| Cameron Diaz |
Cameron Diaz was born in San Diego, California. Her mother, Billie (née Early), is an import-export agent, and her father, Emilio Diaz (1949–2008), worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for more than 20 years as a field gauger. She has an older sister, Chimene. Her father's family came from Spain via Cuba (her Spanish paternal grandparents settled in Tampa's Ybor City and her father was born in Los Angeles County). Her mother is of English, German, and Cherokee descent. Cameron Diaz was raised in Long Beach, California and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School.
Career
Modeling
At age sixteen, Cameron Diaz began her career as a fashion model, contracted with modeling agency Elite Model Management. For the next few years, she worked around the world for contracts with major companies, modeling for designers such as Calvin Klein and Levi's. When she was 17 years old, she was featured on the front cover of the July 1990 issue of the magazine Seventeen.
Acting
At age 21, Cameron Diaz auditioned for the movie The Mask, based on the recommendation of an agent for Elite, who met the film's producers while they were searching for the female main actress. Having no previous acting experience, she started acting lessons after being cast. The Mask became one of the top ten highest grossing films of 1994, earned Cameron Diaz nominations for several awards and launched her as a sex symbol.
During the next three years, she had roles in the low-budget independent films The Last Supper (1995), Feeling Minnesota (1996), She's the One (1996), Keys to Tulsa (1996), and A Life Less Ordinary (1997), preferring to feel her way effectively into the business. She was scheduled to feature in the film Mortal Kombat, but had to resign after breaking her hand while training for the role.
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| Cameron Diaz |
During 2003, Cameron Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic Gangs of New York, and became the third actress (after Wedding costar Julia Roberts) to earn $20 million for a role, receiving the sum for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Her next movies were In Her Shoes (2005) and The Holiday (2006). She was preparing to work again with The Mask co-star Jim Carrey for the film Fun with Dick and Jane, but resigned to feature in In Her Shoes. Cameron Diaz reportedly earned $50 million during the period of a year ending June 2008, for her roles in What Happens in Vegas opposite Ashton Kutcher, and the Shrek sequels. In 2009, she starred in My Sister's Keeper and The Box.
During 2010, Forbes Magazine ranked Cameron Diaz as the richest Hispanic female celebrity, ranking number 60 among the wealthiest 100. Also that year, Diaz was cast as the female lead in a live action/animation hybrid film version of The Smurfs, and as well as voicing Princess Fiona for the movie Shrek Forever After, also reunited with her Vanilla Sky co-star Tom Cruise in the action/comedy Knight and Day, and on January 14, 2011, she played "Lenore Case", the journalist in the remake of the 1940s film, The Green Hornet. She was listed among CEOWORLD magazine's Top Accomplished Women Entertainers. In June of that same year, she appeared alongside Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel in Bad Teacher.
Personal life
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| Cameron Diaz |
She endorsed Al Gore publicly during 2000. Cameron Diaz wore a t-shirt that read "I won't vote for a son of a Bush!" while making publicity visits for Charlie's Angels.
Cameron Diaz has also been involved with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the first and largest nonprofit organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has spoken as an advocate for military families.
Although she was quoted by a 1997 Time magazine article as saying she was germophobic, Cameron Diaz specifically denied this on the June 26, 2009, edition of Real Time with Bill Maher, saying that a small comment she made 12 years earlier regarding public bathroom doorknobs was distorted out of proportion. On April 15, 2008, her father, Emilio Diaz, died of pneumonia, aged 58.
