Before she was a blockbusting Hollywood actor and before she was a “clean” wine entrepreneur, Cameron Diaz may have been an unwitting drug mule, she has revealed.
Diaz has told the story of when, as young woman starting out in the world, she moved to Paris to pursue a modelling career.
In the US, she had made money as a catalogue model, but in Paris “I didn’t work a day. I was there a full year and I didn’t work one day. I couldn’t book a job to save my life.
“I got like one job but really I think I was like a mule carrying drugs to Morocco – I swear to God.”
Diaz went on to become one of the highest paid women in Hollywood and the queen of romcoms from My Best Friend’s Wedding to Sex Tape.
Before that, in the early 1990s,, Diaz recalled the modelling assignment, which involved her being given a locked suitcase “that had my ‘costumes’ in it … quote, unquote”.
It was only when she was at the airport in Morocco and was asked to open it that she started thinking: “What the fuck is in that suitcase? I’m like this blonde-haired blue-eyed girl in Morocco, it’s the nineties, I’m wearing torn jeans and platform boots and my hair down. I’m like … this is really unsafe.”
She explained it was not her case and she had no idea whose it was.
Fortunately for Diaz this was before any of the rigid security measures that are in place at airports today.
“That was my only job I ever got in Paris,” she told Hillary Kerr for her Second Life podcast series.
It was soon after the Morocco incident that Diaz, 21, was cast in The Mask, her film debut.
Producers wanted Anna Nicole Smith for the “blonde bombshell” role but Diaz’s agent persuaded her to try out too. “I thought ‘are you insane?’ I don’t act, first off … it’s not what I do.”
She made an impression on the film’s director, Chuck Russell, and after a few more callbacks, Diaz, then a complete unknown, landed the career-launching role as Tina Carlyle.
After a hugely successful movie career, including Shrek and Being John Malkovich, Diaz “retired” from Hollywood in 2014. Her last role was Miss Hannigan in a remake of Annie.
As well as launching a “clean” wine brand, Diaz, 50 next month, has been the author of two health books, The Body Book and The Longevity Book.
Last month, it emerged that Diaz was returning to movies starring alongside Jamie Foxx in a Netflix film titled Back in Action.