Cameron Diaz Interviews 6 - Cameron Diaz Talks Back

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Cameron Diaz Talks Back - Part 2

"Eventually, I said, ‘Fuck it, I'll just make something.' I got one of those cone-shaped birthday hats and put stuff inside, then carefully found a secure spot in a pine tree. First I tried to feed the bird some worms from my compost barrel; I gently stuck one in the beak. The bird would have none of it. Bitch wouldn't eat it! Fifteen minutes later, the worm is still squirming in the most terrifying place it can imagine—in a bird's beak. I said, ‘Okay, little birdie, I hope you make it through the day and that your mama comes and finds you.' I put the bird into the new nest, all nice and neat, and you know what the little fucker did? Got up and fuckin' fiew away!"

So. What about this story, here, in the evil press? "This is roulette for me," Cameron says, retracting her smile. "I don't know if it's gonna shoot me in the head or shoot me in the foot, if I'll only be limping or if it will be the end of me."

Dear Marshall,

Well, shit. Let's see, this was my big idea. I was going to expose the dirty workings of celebrity journalism and show everyone that when they read about a celebrity, the article is more about the journalist than it is about the celebrity. This turns out to be a difficult task, though, when you're dealing with a writer who is so aware of his accountability. My guess is that your fear of enduring the public wrath of an unhappy celebrity had something to do with your delivering an article that portrays me as a fun, not-as-stupid-as-you-think, hot bitch. (I added that last part; you missed it.) I have manners, I'm aware of my karmic responsibilities, and I understand how annoying it is to hear celebrities bitch about being celebrities. I'm self-aware enough not to look in the mirror every five seconds, the way that most hobo-chic, pretentious, self-absorbed celebrities who talk about their "art" do. I should be happy about this "accountability factor," but you've thrown a wrench into my plans.

Any complaints now will make me sound vain and thin-skinned at best. But the truth is that I don't think any person could read an article written about him- or herself, be it fiattering or critical, and not feel that there was some misrepresentation. And I guarantee you that if you saw pictures and read articles that portrayed you as a stranger to yourself, you'd understand where I'm coming from.

You see, it's the strangest thing that as an actor you're required to sit down with a total stranger and reveal something of yourself in order to hock your product. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem performing this part of the job if it weren't for the fact that the conversations that take place at these meetings are rarely about the film I'm supposed to be publicizing. They are almost completely about my private life. You're right, I consider the publicity stuff to be my job; it's what I get paid for (though I'm gonna have to start taking smaller paychecks). But I can't help feeling anxious about where the conversation is going to go.

I've really come to believe that it's unfair that these conversations are interpreted from only one side. It doesn't feel good when your opinions and memories are misrepresented and then broadcast to the world. And while I'm sure the writer doesn't always set out to do that, it's what usually happens. That's why I've chosen to keep certain things to myself. It's the reason that I won't tell the names of my cats. That's something that is mine, and I don't want the whole world to know. My cats' names are too personal for a stranger to be familiar with them.

I realize there are some people who have no problem giving it all up; they want people to know everything about them, as if that somehow empowers them. I'm not judging them for that—whatever fioats your boat, right? But those people do set the rest of us "celebrities" up. For me, there is a difference between exhibitionism and performing. I chose a profession where I can do what comes naturally to me, which is to perform and entertain. As far as my exhibitionist urges, I need only reveal them to the fortunate few.

Before I began writing my part of this article, I sat down and read your first section, and when I got to the story about my inability to say "anonymity," I thought, Wow, it's amazing I couldn't say that word, even though the lack of it is such a huge part of my own dilemma. The irony! Anyway, I was glad you used it to endear me to readers instead of humiliate me. Because the truth is that I can laugh at myself, just as I did when it took place. And I don't mind if other people laugh at me. But I was there at the moment, and although I do lack the ability to overcome certain linguistic challenges, I had a grasp on the meaning as well as the use of the word. So will readers get that, or will they just think that I am a fiighty actress?

But then I read it out loud to my mom, and all of a sudden I thought, Wow, he totally captured the moment. I'm too damn sensitive. (I also thought that this accountability thing was working out for me. Is it possible that you could make a journalist rise to the occasion?) You never can really see yourself as others see you, it seems, and so that is the real point of this little exercise. Every time I read a description of myself in these articles, I think, Who are they talking about? The writer's perception of you is based on many things. One is what they've already read about you. Take, for example, the rumor that I only wash my face with Evian. That bit of information is false, and I think it's one that jumps from celebrity to celebrity, since I heard the same thing about Demi Moore ten years ago.

As a celebrity, you are exempt from having to do anything for yourself. You shouldn't stand in line, you shouldn't pay for anything—these things are considered the perks. But you also can't be a part of the world that thrives outside your door; you have to fight with people to do anything for yourself; you can't connect with people, because all they see is your celebrity; you have no right to privacy; people can say whatever they want to say about you, even if it's a lie—and everyone believes it. Most of the people you meet only want to talk about one thing—what it's like to be a celebrity. Which is a boring conversation and one that I may put the kibosh on as soon as I finish this article. All in all, your world becomes very small, and you have to make a conscious as well as a very tactful and creative effort to expand it.

Of course, this experience hasn't been so bad. At least not yet. If readers are at all impressed by me and my charming, self-effacing nature, all admiration should be directed toward you, Marshall. After all, this article is more about you than it is about me.

Dear Cameron,

Well, I wasn't afraid to be called out by you—and come to think of it, I'm not sure I rose to the occasion. The one small defense I'd throw out is that my profile of you wasn't accurate or slander-free merely because I was being scrutinized. It would have read the same, word for word, if it were a stand-alone article. But that leads to a key distinction—one that both you and I have evoked in different ways—when it comes to celebrity journalism.

There are two ways, more or less, to do a profile. One is when the subject gives you three hours; the other is when he or she gives you time over three months. In profiles, as I think I mentioned over dinner, access is gold. The longer a writer is allowed to spend with the subject (obvious as this sounds), the more genuinely insightful the piece will become. I've done a ludicrous number of Hollywood profiles and, without exception, the articles I've written after I've spent deep time with the subjects are the ones that leave everyone happy—because, as far wiser writers than I have pointed out, we are admittedly spending a limited amount of time with you, then building a Fictional Cameron, one we dearly hope is as close to the Real Cameron as possible. Are you, the reader wonders, anything like the cutpurse with a heart of gold in Gangs of New York? Or the enlightened ne'er-do-well sister in your new fiick, In Her Shoes? Or are you most like the four-second glimpse we get of you sitting on the subway in Minority Report? (If even three readers catch that reference, I'll be a very happy guy.)

See, the syphilitic tabloid journos don't need time to build their fictional Camerons. They can whip up their own version without even leaving the shop. They'll listen intently to something phoned in by an under-tipped waiter—or really, anyone—then just type away. I will not defend them. They're the reason that, when I visit my hometown at Christmas, family members tell the neighbors that I'm an optometrist. But be warned: After what you said about the happy effect of reading my thing aloud to your mom, I'll be calling her regularly from now on. She'll be sitting through a lot of profiles in the next few years.

Still, maybe I'm wrong. Let's juice it up here. Tell me somethin' splashy. Give me some romance-novel stuff. Are you and Justin on the rocks? Let fiy! Or tell me to fuck off! (I'm sorry to go all Pacino in Scent of a Woman on your ass.) What is the work of which you are most proud? Is it There's Something About Mary? Or Being John Malkovich? I'm betting it's one of the two. Though, in marketing terms, you should say it's In Her Shoes.

There's an apocryphal Bob Woodward joke about profiles—that he doesn't even switch on the tape recorder for his first four hours with a subject. "Bob," as I call him after years of a make-believe close friendship, didn't mean this in regard to celebrity journalism. But it applies. Every actor I know can spend a few hours spinning a persona that he or she wants the reporter to write about—hell, even I could pretend to be an Austrian cabinet minister for that long. But even the most gifted celebrity, faking it, runs out of steam after a few hours, especially if the reporter talks not as a magazine automaton but as an actual person. The celebrity then shows a fieeting glimmer of who he or she actually is. It's human nature.

What you say about the crude insanity of someone pretending to know you after three or four hours, I agree, is entirely true. You know this in your bones after eleven years of it; I know it from the other side, from many years of fretting about it. I'll admit to you that there was a moment over dinner when I was tempted to unfairly psychologize you. Given the way you talk of your focus on directors in your films and the importance of their vision in guiding your performance—to say nothing of how game you are—I got a vibe that when you were a kid, you were a bit of a daddy's girl. I offer this up knowing full well that some of your directors have been female. And I don't have a shred of evidence to know this is true. But that's the point. I'm not supposed to run vibes. I do not run vibes. So I present it as a presumed falsehood. (That said, are you gonna kick my ass for saying this? Because I'm a bleeder. Seriously.)

More to the point, in the three-hour frame, the reporter can only hope that you're behaving remotely like the Cameron Diaz one meets in the wild. That is, like the natural, actual Cameron Diaz. In person, I could only go with my instinct, that I was seeing something beyond the Presentation Cameron's maneuvers. If you were working that game (which I'm not cynical enough to believe), the mispronunciation of anonymity would have been pure genius. Because it did show that you can laugh at yourself—a quality rare among celebrities—and that the fact that your characters tend to be incredibly game seems to be an actual part of your personality.

So how to defend celebrity journalism at all? My odd defense is this. In a true and fair interview, one during which the reporter is listening, watching how your hands move, and looking you straight in the eye, there is every chance that you, the celebrity, will say something incisive. Just as you did, for example, about the fun-house-mirror effect of being "interpreted" by Some Guy who has barely shaken your hand. In a true and fair interview, if you can give a reader a glimpse of yourself—and the reporter manages to reveal a somewhat reliable Fictional Cameron—it can deepen the characters you play. I don't mean merely that it should make people lean back in the cinema and say, "Gosh, that Cameron Diaz can really act, seeing as how different her hair looks in this Malkovich picture!" I mean that something can resonate when what they know of you (or believe they know) is right there in front of them, on the screen. A look in the eye; the air of truth. It can bolster your performance just a tiny bit, I think.

To see you have fun in an interview—to hear you, once removed, laugh your ass off after a word comes out wrong—readers hear the Big Laugh as being that much more real on-screen. And they see that you're having fun, which, especially in something like Mary, they want to see. The 7 percent of celebrity profiles that actually succeed are an echo chamber of real personalities, without being intrusive into, say, the sexual positions you and Justin enjoy (which I have in my notes) or your serious heroin problem, which I would never, ever mention.

That said, with celebrities (and more so, publicists), this is all a game of balancing time against value. You and your team figured three or four hours would do the trick here—though, this being a unique back-and-forth piece, none of the rules apply. This was never going to be just three hours, and you were getting a voice. Ordinarily, when I get three hours from a Big Name, I only go so far as to offer to the reader what it's like to spend exactly three hours with that person. It's a snapshot. I don't pretend I've leapt down the chute into John Malkovich's soul.

On the other hand, when I get three months, in different cities and spending large slices of time with someone, everything runs deeper. The fictional subject suddenly isn't so fictional. Many times, in those cases, the reporter stays friends with those subjects after the piece comes out. Because at that point, there's no way around it: You know each other somewhat well. There are times when reporting turns into a fellowship and the subject tells you things, off the record, that his own family doesn't know. Things that you never repeat to anyone, ever. Trust does exist between actual humans, even when one of the humans works in the media. It's rare, but it happens.

So the press isn't always out to lie about you, or write that bullshit romance novel, or score those topless photos (okay, two out of three). Granted, since Watergate, the press has been more important—and also far more arrogant. Part of that arrogance is an assumption in the minds of journalists who have watched All the President's Men a few too many times that any profile without something just awful in it is a puff piece, which isn't exactly true. Before Watergate, there were celebrity profiles that were not so much knee-jerk negative as nuanced. You could read a piece about Frank Sinatra that left people who hated him saying, "Finally, they nailed that bastard Sinatra!" and left those who loved him saying, "Finally, they captured Sinatra's greatness!"

It can be that way again. It should be—and sometimes, it is. (By the way, did I really forget to describe you as a "hot bitch" in part one of this piece? Jesus, I'm losing my craft.)

Dear Marshall,

You are hilarious. Really, I think you're a funny mother$#&*@!. I get it: It's impossible to give an honest portrayal of someone when the time allotted by said celebrity's "team" is only enough for you to assault a poor 16-year-old boy and his mother. (By the way, let's just address this topic while we are here. Jordan's mother was a little overzealous, but that's what proud mothers do. They are fierce forces of nature and will stop at nothing when it comes to their kid. Try to see it from her point of view.) So are we cool on Jordan and his mother now?

Where was I going? Oh yeah, if ever I lost my head and did anything asinsane as let a journalist follow me around for three months, I would definitely give you a go at trying to keep up with me. I get what you're saying. If only you could witness me in all aspects of my life, not just my three-hour dog and pony show at the Chateau, you could create a more rounded portrayal of me. And I truly appreciate your willingness to dedicate the time to achieve that. Look, I like you. I think you're funny and smart, and there's always the possibility that we could be friends. But if you and I spent chunks of time together, I would always be aware that you were there to observe me, and you would always be making some kind of note that you would later incorporate into your story about me. Giving that kind of time is not something that any of my other friends do. It's not that I have anything to hide. I don't pull my cats' (who shall remain nameless) tails or beat my assistant or let her beat me (kinky). I've just become very protective of what is mine. I hold sacred things that many people wouldn't think twice about giving over.

Are you wondering what I am comfortable giving over? Because I've been asking myself that question. I think of all the possible things we could have talked about when we met. We could have discussed world politics, which I have a lot of opinions about, but no one wants to hear an actor's point of view when it comes to politics. Actors who do try to talk politics get mocked. So I choose to be political in a way that I feel is most effective given the position I am in. Or you could have written about all the things that you turned the recorder off for. That would have made for an awesome story. We could have talked about...well, we could have talked about anything. But we didn't. Why?

Because people are obsessed with celebrity, that's why. And I have to tell you, from where I stand, it doesn't seem like such a healthy thing. It's really strange to see it from the inside. So strange that I sort of wish everyone could see what it looks like from in here.

But obviously, I'm too guarded to ever allow anyone in from the outside to observe it. That said, you never know, maybe next week I'll feel different about it. Maybe I'll start carrying around a video recorder to document my and Justin's tongue wrestling. Or I'll invite the entire staff of Us Weekly to my annual pap smear. We could spin it off into a new reality series: E!'s Celebrity Gyno-Challenge. (I'm probably the only one who is laughing at that, right?)

Obviously, I have some shit to work out, but this has been a very cathartic experience. So, thanks. I kind of wish you could see everything I deleted. I appreciate the opportunity to do this insane dance that we call "the celebrity profile" in a new and different way. It's been fun. Why do we do it in the first place? Well, I guess we both need our jobs.

P.S. I wasn't a daddy's girl. I asked my mom.

Part 5.

Dear Cameron,

So our little experiment comes to an end. I've tried hard to be fair, and not only because whenever the subject of lawsuits came up (and this isn't on the tapes), you silently pointed at me and nodded furiously. Nor is it because of Justin's late-night phone threats. Not entirely.

Actually, it's been a real pleasure. You had me at "Well, shit."

Do I have regrets? Of course I do. For one, you never told us what your favorite film work was. (Why do you refuse? Is it the Zapruder film? Oh, my God. It's the Zapruder film, isn't it?) And, alas, America shall never know the names of your cats. I sort of wish I hadn't guessed Fluffers, because it later occurred to me that fiuffers are the people who work on the sets of porn movies and...well, you know. (There are jokes in life we can never take back.) But is it too much to ask simply to know the name of a cat? Come to think of it, is it too much to ask that cats be able to talk, and in doing so, convey messages from the dead? I tell you it is not!

I can neither explain nor defend America's sad obsession with celebrity. A lot of people lead empty lives. As Bob Redford once said to me, "Reading about glamour is the cure when reality is not enough." Actually, he didn't technically say it to me. I think I saw it in an article somewhere. Also, it might have been Dustin Hoffman. It was definitely a big star. In any case, for my money, he or she hit the nail on the head in that paraphrased quote.

Marshall Sella writes regularly for GQ.

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