Why did Cameron Diaz quit Hollywood?

Cameron Diaz is about to have a comeback with Netflix spy thriller Back in Action, which she stars in with Jamie Foxx, ten years after she began her acting hiatus.

The actor was one of the definitive faces of Hollywood in the '90s and '00s, appearing in iconic films like The Holiday, Charlie's Angels, and There's Something About Mary. Diaz bid farewell to the entertainment industry in 2014 following the release of her last film Annie, but why did she decide to quit the business in the first place?

Here is everything that you need to know ahead of the actor's big return.

Announcing her retirement

Diaz's retirement was first made public in 2014 after she had finished filming Annie and decided to step back from the business, with her friend Selma Blair saying at the 2018 Oscar's Vanity Fair pre-party in LA that she was "done" with acting.

Per MailOnline, Blair said: "I had lunch with Cameron the other day, we were reminiscing about the film. I would have liked to do a sequel but Cameron's retired from acting, she's like 'I'm done,'. I mean, she doesn't need to make any more films, she has a pretty great life, I don't know what it would take to bring her back."

Blair later shared on social media that her remarks about Diaz were meant as a joke, and that the actor was not retired but it was soon evident that the actor had chosen to take a step back.

Diaz spoke about her decision in 2017 at a Goop Wellness Summit where she explained the stress of travelling all the time for work had taken its toll. Per E! News, she said: "I just went, 'I can't really say who I am to myself.' Which is a hard thing to face up to. I felt the need to make myself whole."

Then in a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Diaz officially called herself "actually retired" in an whilst speaking with her Sweetest Thing co-stars Blair and Christina Applegate.

Family life and business

Following her departure from the world of acting, Diaz instead focused on her personal life and launching her own businesses.

The actor married Good Charlotte musician Benji Madden in 2015, and the pair have welcomed two children —a daughter named Raddix in 2019 and a son named Cardinal in March 2024, both of whom they had via surrogate. Family life became her first priority, with the actor focusing on her personal life rather than work.

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As well as focus on her family, Diaz launched her own clean wine brand named Avaline and wrote two health and wellness books, she also helped invest in various health and biotech startups.

It was in 2020 that Diaz explained exactly why she chose to retire, telling Gwyneth Paltrow in an episode of In Goop Health: The Sessions: "It’s a strange thing to say. I know a lot of people won’t understand it. But it’s so intense to work at that level and be that public and put yourself out there. 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’m sensitive to some energies and not others, but I do get the overwhelming energy of the attention being put towards me. I stopped, I really looked at my life, and I saw what I had been [missing].”

The actor added that she felt she had "handed parts of my life" to the Hollywood machine, and that she realised that she wanted to make a change: "For me, I needed to become self-sufficient again.

"I really needed to know that I could take care of myself, that I knew how to be an adult, that I knew how to navigate the world of the complexity of being an adult and having responsibility and putting all the pieces of my life together the way I wanted it to be put together — not the way other people thought it should go."

Return to acting

Diaz confirmed her return to acting in 2022 with the announcement that she had been cast alongside Foxx in Back in Action, their third film together after 1999’s Any Given Sunday and 2014’s Annie. They are set to portray seemingly average parents who are soon to revealed to be anything but, as they are forced to come out of retirement as CIA agents when their cover is blown.

Watch a trailer for Back In Action

Back in Action isn't the only film that Diaz is working on now, as she is also set to appear in Apple TV+ original film Outcome, which she will star in alongside Keanu Reeves, which is being produced by Jonah Hill (who also stars). Otherwise Diaz is also set to reprise her voice acting role as Fiona in Shrek 5 when it returns in 2026.

Back in Action premieres on Netflix on Friday, 17 January.