The way a room full of New York film critics acted in December 1998, you’d assume Cameron Diaz had collected her shock Best Actress prize while burping and farting her way up to the podium. “More than one person present was overheard comparing this once-august event to an awards show spoof on Saturday Night Live,” The New York Observer wrote a few years later, still scandalised that thespy luminaries such as Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave had been beaten by a profane 26-year-old starlet – one who’d go on to win a celebrity burp-off for kids’ channel Nickelodeon. Diaz had been awarded by the city’s circle of film critics for her work in There’s Something About Mary, that year’s phenomenon of testicle gags and flying semen, and she seemed embarrassed. “Next time,” she said from the stage, “I promise to act.”
Diaz occupied this strange state of pseudo-ironic acclaim throughout her early celebrity. She was a performer propelled to stardom by her innate glow, her sprite-like sass and her sex appeal, but for whom real, earnest approval always seemed punishingly out of reach. And it was only when she retired from acting in 2015 – in an effort, she said, to “reclaim” her life – that many decided to take another look at her. Diaz made acting look like a lark, carrying with her an ease and naturalism that is typically overlooked in favour of batten-down-the-hatches histrionics. Shouldn’t we have appreciated her more as Tom Cruise’s scorned ex in Vanilla Sky, or for the sensitivity she brought to the role of a frizzy-haired, chimp-petting sadsack in Being John Malkovich? Whither her Oscar for In Her Shoes?
