Cameron Diaz is relaxing into new motherhood, and thrilled at 47, to be her own boss. She spoke to Gwyneth Paltrow about her life for Paltrow's In Goop Health series, and they both discussed why they opted to steer their lives away from the Hollywood spotlight.
“What did it feel like to walk away from a movie career of that magnitude?” Paltrow, also 47, asked Diaz.
Diaz said: “Like peace. A peace in my soul because I was finally taking care of myself.
Diaz added: “It’s a strange thing to say, I know a lot of people won’t understand it, I know you understand it, but it was 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. And you really energetically, I’m sensitive to energy, some energies and not others, but I do get the overwhelming energy of the attention being put toward me.”
She continued: “I stopped and really looked at my life. When you’re making a movie … they own you. You’re there for 12 hours a day for months on end you have no time for anything else.”
Diaz met her husband Benji Madden, and that sealed the deal. They married in 2015 and welcomed their first child, a daughter named Raddix, this year.
“We got married pretty much immediately because we realized we just had to do it,” Diaz told Paltrow. “We went hard for a few years where we just ironed our relationship out, hacked it out. It was a lot of work, but we had to.”
She added, “I'm older than him, not a lot older, but he was at the place in his life where he also wanted to do that as well.”