Model-turned-actress Cameron Diaz seemed to come out of nowhere when she made her 1994 screen debut opposite Jim Carrey in The Mask. However, her unusual beauty — the result of her Cuban-American and Anglo-German-Native-American parentage — helped to ensure that she would not be soon forgotten.

Angel: Natalie Cook To call Cameron Diaz the hot Angel would be a little nondescript, since all three of the film’s leading ladies are all sorts of hot and very beautiful. Cameron’s character, Natalie Cook, is probably better summed up as the dumb, but very attractive, blonde, which is just fine in our book. Natalie is somewhat goofy, fun and has a peculiar sense of humor. Being blonde is just one of a few characteristics Cameron Diaz's character, Natalie, shares with Farrah Fawcett's Jill Monroe. Other similarities: Both are their trio's most effervescent member and both are their group's most athletic and expert in martial arts.

Cameron Diaz Profile

Cameron Michelle Diaz was born in San Diego, California, on August 30, 1972. The Virgo beauty followed older sister Chimene to complete parents' Emilio (Cuban, oil foreman) and Billie's (Native American, Italian and German mix, exporting agent) small family. Cameron attended the Long Beach Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California.

While her teen contemporaries were struggling with mundane things like school and dating, Southern California native Cameron Diaz was employed by the Elite Modeling agency appearing on magazine covers and in campaigns for clients like Calvin Klein and Levi's. And just like many women in the modeling industry, she harbored dreams of an acting career. Diaz, of Cuban and Native American descent, burst onto the big screen as the torch-singing moll in 1994's Jim Carrey blockbuster "The Mask". Perhaps ironically, she had set her sights lower, auditioning for the supporting part of a reporter (played in the film by Amy Yasbeck), but after some dozen callbacks, she was hired. In spite of, or perhaps because of, her lack of formal training, the now blonde Diaz managed to hold her own against the often over-the-top antics of co-star Carrey. Roger Ebert writing in his review in the Chicago Sun-Times (July 29, 1994) called her "a true discovery in the film, a genuine sex bomb with a gorgeous face, a wonderful smile, and a gift of comic timing," and correctly predicted that while it was her first film role, it would surely not be her last.

Diaz surprised studios, fans, and critics when she did not follow up her success in The Mask by seeking work in other big studio blockbuster films. She was courted by virtually every producer scrambling to cast "this year's blonde". Instead, she chose to step back from the fast track to fame. She refused several offers of big budget movies and spent several years working in small independent films. Many of these films were dark and quirky, like The Last Supper, about liberals who decide to rid the world of right wing extremists by inviting them to dinner one by one and poisoning them. Diaz got mixed reviews for her roles in these films. Some critics found it hard not to typecast her as the model-turned-actress bimbo, while others found her subtle and engaging, even pointing her out as the best performer in films like She's the One that they otherwise hated. Stacy Title, director of The Last Supper, said that Diaz has the "old movie-star glamour of Rita Hayworth and the incredible timing and great physical comedy of Lucille Ball."

Having proven her comedic abilities as a supporting player, Diaz graduated to star in one of 1998's highest grossing (in both senses of the word) feature, the Farrelly brothers' "There's Something About Mary". As Ben Stiller's dream girl, she is eternally optimistic and a paragon of beauty. Yet she is also a fine comedic performer, especially in bizarre or outrageous situations (like the now famous "hair gel" scene), in part, as Charles Taylor pointed out in the July 18, 1998 issue of Salon, because of "the crazed gleam that sneaks into her eyes, her big toothy smile and the manic trill you can sometimes hear in her voice." There's Something About Mary filled movie houses and set staid reviewers from journals as diverse as The New Republic and Variety rolling in the aisles in unwilling laughter over jokes about penis pain and cruelty to animals. The film not only intentionally broke all taboos about good taste and appropriate comedy material, but inspired a series of so-called "gross-out" comedies that competed to find the most offensive subjects of fun. In the midst of it all, Diaz's sweet, funny, and artful performance as Mary made There's Something About Mary the single film of the genre that may outlast the fad. In a surprise move, the New York Film Critics voted her their Best Actress award. Although virtually wasted in a cameo as a TV reporter in Terry Gilliam's attempt to capture the oddball universe of Hunter S. Thompson in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Diaz delved into the dark side, downplaying her usually bubbly screen persona to play yet another bride-to-be in Peter Berg's black comedy "Very Bad Things" (both 1998). Here, she essayed a manipulative, cunning almost psychopathic woman determined at all costs to march down the aisle. (The writer-director envisioned the character as "a young Martha Stewart with a bad case of rabies.") Alternately seductive and bullying to her intended (Jon Favreau), she crafted a comic creation that bordered on the grotesque, yet through her skills managed to make her understandable. In 1999's inventive, if not wholly satisfying "Being John Malkovich", Diaz adopted a dowdy look and mane of frizzy brown hair as Lotte Schwartz, the pet store employee wife of a puppeteer (John Cusack). When her husband discovers a mysterious portal that allows anyone to spend 15 minutes inside the mind and body of the titular actor, she has an epiphany, experiencing a connection to her husband's brittle co-worker (Catherine Keener) that transcends sex and spins off into a complicated and surprising adventure. Once again, Diaz built a funny persona out of seemingly contradictory parts and proved her versatility. success.

Charlie's Angels Adopting a more serious pose, she rounded out the millennium as the ambitious new owner of a struggling football franchise in Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday", proving with this hard-line role that her talents had more facets yet to be tapped. She continued to stretch, successfully undertaking challenging roles in the female ensemble of "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her" (screened at Sundance in 2000; aired on Showtime in 2001) and in the drama "Invisible Circus" (2000). Teaming with Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu as "Charlie's Angels" (also 2000) in the unqualified hit offered her an opportunity to show her lighter side with a disarming turn, as well as convincingly kick butt as a pseudo action hero. And she won a legion of youthful admirers with his turn as Princess Fiona in the charming CGI tale "Shrek" (2001) and its sequel "Shrek 2" (2004).   A supporting role in "Vanilla Sky" (2001) as the woman whose desire for more than a casual physical relationship with Tom Cruise's playboy drives her to distraction earned Diaz even more critical respect. Likened to Carole Lombard by director Martin Scorsese, Diaz showed something of the uncompromising spirit and sexiness that Lombard had been, and that she herself was increasingly becoming, known for. Later that year the actress played a desirable woman who falls in love with a man she can't win over in the romantic comedy "The Sweetest Thing." Although the light-as-a-feather film was not entirely satisfying, certain scenes nearly bubbled over with Diaz's inherently loopy charm, infectious grin and freewheeling approach. It also further solidified her on-screen status as the girl-next-door who doesn't mind the occasional raunchy joke.

In between film roles, the actress (who made news for her romance with the younger pop star Justin Timberlake) starred in "Trippin'" (2005), a 10-episode travel series for MTV in which the actress and fellow celebrities visited exotic locales and enjoyed unusual activities, riding elephants in Nepal, sand-boarding in Chile and testing the hot springs in Yellowstone. Diaz returned center stage in director Curtis Hanson's dramedy "In Her Shoes" (2005), which cast the actress and co-star Toni Collette as tight-knit but polar opposite sisters—Diaz played the reckless, sexy party girl, Collette the responsible attorney with low self-esteem—who have a calamitous falling out and must slowly come to learn that they share more than the same size feet. In “The Holiday” (2006), Diaz was a disgruntled woman living in Los Angeles who realizes that the man she has been living with is having an affair. She meets an English woman (Kate Winslet) in love with a man in love with another woman online and the two impulsively decide to switch houses for the Christmas holiday, only to find the one thing neither of them want: romance. Meanwhile, Diaz voiced Princess Fiona for a third go-round in “Shrek the Third” (2007).