Everything Cameron Diaz Has Said About Quitting Acting

In an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow for her In goop Health: The Sessions series, Cameron Diaz spoke about her life after acting.

Diaz spoke about her wine Avaline and her other ventures, before opening up more about her decision to leave acting. Diaz has not acted in a film since 2014. Her last credit as an actress on IMDb was for the 2014 adaptation of Annie.

"Here I am. I'm in my 40's. I'm completely starting over," she said at one point in the interview, and Paltrow asked further questions about what "starting over" meant for Diaz.

"I just decided that I wanted different things out of my life," Diaz said. "I'd gone so hard for so long, working, making films, and it's such a grind, and I didn't really make any space for my personal life."

Diaz spoke candidly about how overwhelming it was to be an actress and work in show business. "I got a peace in my soul, because I was finally taking care of myself," Diaz said. "There's a lot of energy coming at you at all times, when you're really visible as an actor, and doing press and putting yourself out there... I do get the overwhelming energy of the attention that's being put towards me."

The Vanilla Sky actress said that by quitting acting she was able to focus on her personal relationships, including with her husband, Good Charlotte musician Benji Madden. "I realized I handed off parts of my life to all these other people, and they took it, and some people I had to basically take it back and take responsibility for my own life," she said. "There's a lot of things I had to iron out, a lot of relationships I had to repair, a lot of relationships I had to build, that I was absent in my life."

Diaz has spoken a few times about her decision to quit acting. In 2017, speaking at a Goop summit, the actress expressed similar ideas to the ones said in the recent interview. "I just went, 'I can't really say who I am to myself.' Which is a hard thing to face up to," she said.

In a March 2018 interview, looking back on The Sweetest Thing, Diaz confirmed that she had at least "semi-retired" from acting. "I'm semi-retired, too, and I am actually retired, so I would love to see you ladies," she told Entertainment Weekly in response to a question about the cast of that movie reuniting.

In a 2019 essay for InStyle, Diaz laid out her reasoning a little more in-depth than she had up to that point. She explained that she didn't miss performing, and was excited for the new projects she was working on after her life as an actress. "I'm not selling any films, and because I'm not selling anything, I don't have to give anybody anything. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm living my life," she wrote.

Diaz's publicist did not respond to Newsweek's emailed request for comment in time for publication.