Cameron Diaz says she had to leave acting to get her life back. Or, at least, control of it.
As she tells Kevin Hart on the comedian's Peacock show "Hart to Heart," the "Charlie's Angels" star said she had her epiphany at age 40, and understood what to do about her career.
"When you do something at a really high level for a long period of time, there's a lot that — when you're the person who's sort of delivering on this one thing," said Diaz, now 48. "You're the person on the screen, you're the person who's 'the talent' — everything around you, all parts of you that isn't that, has to be handed off to other people."
And while she says, "I love acting," she says having so many people making decisions for her became disempowering. "I feel like I was really lucky because I had people that I worked with for 20 years who I know they have my best interest but for me, I just really wanted to make my life manageable by me. My routine in a day is literally what I can manage to do by myself."
In 2018, during a reunion with her "The Sweetest Thing" co-stars, she acknowledged she was "actually retired" from acting. And as she explains to Hart now, she didn't like having important areas of her life that she "wasn't touching and wasn't managing ... it was so big."
By leaving acting she could redirect her energies to things like her husband, Benji Madden, and their daughter, Raddix, who came along in 2019.
"I love being a mother. It's the best, best, best part of my life," she said during an Instagram chat last year. "I'm so, so grateful and so happy and it's the best thing ever and I'm so lucky to get to do it with Benj."