Celebrity Galore

Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress.

In August 2008, Forbes Magazine listed Diaz as the highest paid actress in Hollywood. She reportedly earned $50 million in the period of a year ending June 2008, for her roles in What Happens in Vegas and in the third installment of Shrek.

Diaz was born in San Diego, California, the daughter of Billie (née Early), an import-export agent, and Emilio Diaz (1949-2008), who worked for the California oil company UNOCAL for twenty plus years, as a Field Gauger, and in the pipeline department, until he retired in 1998. Her father was a second-generation Cuban American and her mother is of English and German and Cherokee ancestry. She has one older sister, Chimene Diaz, (born June 5, 1970, San Diego). She attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School at the same time as rapper Snoop Dogg.

At 16, she began her career as a fashion model. Diaz signed with top modeling agency Elite Model Management. After graduating from high school, she went to work in Japan and met video director Carlo de la Torre. On her return to the U.S., she moved in with him. For the next few years, her modeling took her around the world, working for contracts with major companies. She modeled for designers such as Calvin Klein and Levi’s. She was featured on the cover of the July 1990 issue of Seventeen magazine.

During the 1999-2000 period, Diaz starred in many films, such as Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, A Life Less Ordinary, Any Given Sunday, and the hit adaptation of Charlie’s Angels. In 2001, she won nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, and the AFI Awards for Vanilla Sky, and also voiced Princess Fiona in Shrek, for which she earned $10 million. In 2003, Diaz received another Golden Globe nomination for Martin Scorsese’s epic Gangs of New York, and became the third actress (after Wedding costar Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon) to earn $20 million for a role, receiving the sum for Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Her next film appearances were in Shrek 2, In Her Shoes, and The Holiday . During 2004 and early 2005, Diaz explored some of the planet’s environmentally unique locations while discovering ways to help preserve them for the 10-episode MTV series Trippin’ which featured numerous celebrities and friends of Diaz, such as Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Mark Hoppus, Eva Mendes, and Justin Timberlake.

Diaz returned to the screen for Shrek the Third in 2007, in which she co-starred with her boyfriend Justin Timberlake. She was set to team up again with The Mask co-star Jim Carrey in the film Fun with Dick and Jane, but dropped out to star in In Her Shoes. She also appeared in the romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas, opposite Ashton Kutcher. She will also appear in Shrek 4 and is also set to star in The Box, a horror thriller in 2008 co-starring James Marsden.

On July 7, 2007, Diaz participated at Live Earth in New York by introducing Bon Jovi and The Police. In 2007, People ranked her as the Best Dressed Female Celebrity.

In October 2004, Diaz and Timberlake were in an altercation with a tabloid photographer outside a hotel. When the photographer and another man tried to photograph them, the couple snatched the camera. Pictures of the incident appeared in Us Weekly. Representatives for the pair claimed that they were “ambushed” and acting out of self-defense.

Source [ Wikipedia ]