A decade ago, Cameron Diaz “left” Hollywood. She actually still lives in LA, she’s been LA-based this whole time, and she’s still friends with her Hollywood clique. But she just stopped taking acting jobs and she didn’t work in front of the camera for years. It was sort of a big mystery – why did she walk away from movie stardom? Did the scripts dry up? Was she just tired of the industry? Did someone do something awful to her? No one knew. In the past decade, Diaz got married, welcomed two children (daughter Raddix and son Cardinal Madden) and launched a wine line (Avaline). She focused on herself and her personal life. Well, now she’s back to work, and she appeared at a Fortune panel discussion this week.

After becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Cameron Diaz stepped away from the limelight in 2014; now 10 years later, with several new projects in the works, Diaz is opening up about her decision to both leave and return. With her last onscreen role in 2014’s Annie, Diaz said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Monday that stopping acting “was something I just had to do. It felt like the right thing for me to do to reclaim my own life and I just really didn’t care about anything else. Nobody’s opinion, nobody’s success, no one’s offer, no one’s anything could change my mind about my decision of taking care of myself and building the life that I really wanted to have.”

Now, Diaz is set to return to the big screen for Netflix’s Back in Action with Jamie Foxx, premiering on the streamer in January 2025. She is also reported to be returning for the upcoming Shrek 5 and is in talks to star opposite Keanu Reeves in dark comedy Outcome.

“It was just the right time for my family. After Covid, we were in the house for a long time, which was amazing and the problem was we would probably stay there, we would still be there right now. People would be like, ‘It’s over’ and I’d be like, ‘No it’s not, it’s not over for me,’” Diaz explained of coming back to Hollywood. “So I had to push myself; my husband and I — my husband, who is the best — he was like, ‘You’ve been supporting us and building the family’ and supporting him in his businesses, he’s like, ‘It’s time for us to support you and let Mommy ascend and do her thing.’ He’s like, ‘Let me see you do it girl.’ I was like, ‘Alright, here we go.’”

She added that for the Netflix project, she also “couldn’t say no to Jamie. He said, ‘Come with me’ and I said, ‘OK let’s do it;’ it’s our third film together so it’s really great.” The two previously worked together on Annie and 1999’s Any Given Sunday.

[From THR]

Does anyone else remember when Julia Roberts sort of did something similar? She got married, had her babies, and for more than a decade, she only took a handful of roles in front of the camera (she did a lot of voice work at the same time though). Julia and Cameron were always kind of similar in how they approached the profession too. But still, it really does feel like there was some kind of instigating incident which caused Cameron to be like “you know what, f–k this industry.” But if she says that she just reached a point where she wanted to step away for a while, good for her for listening to her inner voice and building her nest.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.