Cameron Diaz’s 10-year retirement ‘best year’ of her life

Actress Cameron Diaz has said the decade she spent retired from acting was “the best 10 years” of her life.

The Holiday star returned to screens this month in a new spy thriller – Back in Action – with actor Jamie Foxx.

However, it is unclear whether this is a permanent return to acting, as she told BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show “this might be the beginning… I don’t know”.

Asked if she liked the anonymity of stepping back, she said “omg I loved it”, adding that she was “free” to be a mother and wife but was “really grateful” to be back .

Her last role was Ms Hannigan in the 2014 remake of Annie – a film Foxx also starred in. However, Diaz only formally confirmed her retirement from acting in 2018.

Foxx, who has worked with Diaz twice before, said he persuaded her to return to the business by “very humbly” asking if she would come back and “blow us with her incredible talent.”

She said she was back in the world of film “at least for this” after 10 years of “not even paying attention”.

When Diaz, 52, received the script for this new project, she and musician husband Benji Madden said “maybe it’s time to switch it up for the family a little bit, because you know, it’s Jamie”.

It would take someone special to “leave my family for 10 hours a day”, she added.

In Back in Action, Diaz and Foxx, 57, play a married couple – with children – and former spies who are forced out of retirement when danger finds them and puts their lives on the line.

Speaking about her hiatus, Diaz called it the “best” 10 years of her life.

“I was free to be (like) ‘I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m living my life’ — it was so nice.”

“Ten years later, this made sense to my family,” she explained.

When she first stepped away from acting, Diaz said she was still asked to play roles.

“Everybody would be like, ‘Would you like to—’ No.

“‘You know, there’s this thing—’ I don’t care.

“‘Do you want to join—’ No, and then people stopped asking.”

Now, 10 years later, she told Norton she feels acting is a “privilege.”

“If I just let this go, all this goodwill that I’ve built up over so long, the passion that I have for entertaining people and making movies that people smile and laugh (at) and feel good. .. if I didn’t not engage with it again and give it a chance and participate in it and be grateful for it, I’d be a fool,” she explained.

She added: “Maybe I’ll topple, maybe just go gung-ho, I don’t know.”