Justin Lloyd/Newspix/Rex Features
There’s Something About Cameron Diaz
But what happens when you date women who resemble
the characters she plays? Jon Wilde lives and learns
From the moment she made her movie debut in 1994’s The Mask, I was captivated by Cameron Diaz. Wearing a perilously low-cut, spray-on dress, she sashays out of the pouring rain and into a bank, where she’s met by a doofus clerk (Jim Carrey). The flirtatious connivance of Marilyn Monroe, the sparky intelligence of Katharine Hepburn, the supernatural poise of Lauren Bacall – all you need to know about her acting talents is evident in that scene. She is one of those rare actresses who arrives fully formed.
It was Hepburn who declared, “I consider it my job to be fascinating” and over the course of her 13-year movie career, Diaz has done just that.
Part of that fascination for me stems from the fact that so many of the characters that she has portrayed have made me shudder with recognition: these were women with whom I had been intimately involved.
Not that Diaz has ever played off-the-peg archetypes. If she has played the kind of women that we all instantly recognise, it’s a mark of her ability to make her characters seem real, often unbearably so.
Take her turn in 1995’s The Last Supper, one of a series of independent films she made after the success of The Mask. She plays one of a group of self-righteous, liberal-leaning students who discover that the least troublesome way to silence political opponents is to bury them in the back yard.
As the movie unfolded, I couldn’t resist drawing comparisons with girlfriend G, a beautiful feminist I’d dated in my early twenties. G stopped short of actually murdering those she disagreed with, but only just.
On one occasion, G attempted to stab me in the brain with a screwdriver after I begged to differ with her view that the Beatles would have been ten times better if Lennon and McCartney had been female.
I felt a similar chill of recognition watching Diaz in 2005’s In Her Shoes, one of many movies in which she has played an unsympathetic character. Beauty is an unearned privilege, a gift from the gods if you like. But there are those who seem driven to abuse that privilege.
It’s as though good looks serve as a God-given entitlement to go through life as a spoilt, narcissistic, manipulative, freeloading hellcat, leaving a trail of emotional devastation. You’d be forgiven for deciding Diaz’s character was the runaway winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity Award, but then you’ve never met Girlfriend F.
This former squeeze seemed to believe that life was an experiment devoted to messing with the heart and mind of any man who fell for her obvious physical charms. F had no love for men but, like Diaz’s character, she regarded working for a living as an alien concept, and so depended on men to pay her way.
F also specialised in elaborate mind games. One evening I treated her to a meal at an upmarket Chinese restaurant and halfway through the main course, she caused an almighty scene out of nowhere. Apparently, she objected strongly to the fact that I was sitting “at the wrong angle”. When I had the temerity to query this, she stormed to the exit – after depositing a plate of scallops in black bean sauce in my lap. Thankfully, F never looked back.
Then there was the ditzy disaster area Diaz plays so assuredly in 2002’s The Sweetest Thing. How could I not compare her to Girlfriend Y who, just like Diaz’s Christina Walters, had a tendency to shed inhibitions with a few drinks inside her? In The Sweetest Thing, a slightly tipsy Diaz takes it upon herself to liven up a sedate restaurant by launching into a song in praise of the male member. She’d have no doubt approved of the way Y behaved when meeting my extended family for the first time one Christmas.
We got to Boxing Day with not too much in the way of incident. Then, half a pint of sherry to the good, she decided to treat my grandparents to her version of the Aristocrats joke, possibly the filthiest and most offensive gag ever. Perhaps the joke would have been better received had she not chosen to tell it during the Queen’s speech.
Watching Diaz play an expert pickpocket in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York, I was reminded of Girlfriend A. Now, A was a generous sort, but only with stuff that didn’t belong to her.
Browsing in bookshops with A, you might casually mention your interest in exploring the work of, say, John Updike. By the time you emerged into the fresh air, a good proportion of Updike’s backlist would be stuffed up her duffel coat. I reached the end of the line with A one Christmas when she presented me with a top-of-the-range stereo system. The hi-fi was barely out of its wrapping before she breezily informed me that the item in question had been half-inched from her own father. But not to worry. “He’ll probably be stone deaf in a couple of years,” she reasoned.
Much has made of Diaz’s willingness to play against type. And when she plays bad girls, she plays very, very bad girls. In 1998’s black comedy Very Bad Things, she brilliantly plays the bride-to-be from the eighth circle of hell. In a movie populated by some of the nastiest, most amoral characters ever to hit the screen, Diaz’s Laura Garrety is the nastiest and most amoral of them all.
Watching Very Bad Things proved to be something of a turning point for me. I saw it in 2005 when I was engaged to a character not dissimilar to Garrety. Her jealousy, for example, was on an epic scale. Two months before we were due to walk down the aisle, I discovered she had sent abusive letters to every single woman in my life, warning them that dire consequences would result if they ever contacted me again. Work colleagues, girlfriends of friends, even my mum was informed she was now surplus to requirements.
Not only was it time to move on, it was clear that dating Cameron Diaz’s least sympathetic characters was no way forward for a grown man. Maybe I should find a girlfriend who resembled one of her more sympathetic characters, or even Diaz herself.
Her role in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary is another that few other actresses would have taken on. Those who read past the part where Ben Stiller’s character gets his undercarriage stuck in his zipper, would surely have called a halt when Mary is called upon to demonstrate a protein-rich alternative to hair gel. It’s hard not to believe that this is the role where Diaz comes closest to playing herself. Hilarious, perfect and completely believable, she’s beautiful, sweet and caring, has impeccable taste in music and movies, likes to drink beer and hang out with the boys.
If Mary wasn’t perfect enough, Diaz followed it up with perhaps the ultimate male fantasy, becoming one of Charlie’s Angels. Her character, Natalie, had all of Mary’s goofy sweetness paired with Diaz’s own sexy tomboy attitude.
She was one of the guys but, crucially, seemed to actually like them, too. She refused to interrupt a phone call to potential beau Luke Wilson despite being in the middle of a fight to the death with Kelly Lynch’s leather-clad villainess. You can tell this girl doesn’t play by the rules.
These last two movies provided me with a check-list of the sort of qualities I ought to be looking for in a girlfriend. And since finding that woman, there’s been no looking back. Every step of the way, I remind myself that, while there might be something about Mary, there’s most definitely something about Cameron Diaz that will never cease to fascinate.