Cameron Diaz says she has found peace after quitting acting, as the hectic lifestyle associated with Hollywood had been having a negative impact on her life.
Speaking on Gwyneth Paltrow’s health podcast, the Charlie’s Angels actress said quitting acting had been a breath of much needed fresh air in her life.
“A peace. I got a peace in my soul.” she said as she spoke of the positive effects of retiring: “I finally was taking care of myself.” Diaz last featured in a movie in the 2014 adaptation of Annie.
Since then she has become got married, become a mother and launched her own “clean wine” brand. “It’s a strange thing to say. I know a lot of people won’t understand it,” she said.
“But it’s 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. I’m sensitive to some energies and not others, but I do get the overwhelming energy of the attention being put towards me.
“I stopped, I really looked at my life, and I saw what I had been [missing].”
“You’re there for 12 hours a day. For months on end, you have no time for anything else. I realized I handed off parts of my life to all these other people and they took it.”
She added, “I had to basically take it back and take responsibility for my own life. That’s my job. There’s a lot of things I had to iron out, a lot of relationships I had to repair, a lot of relationships I had to build that were absent in my life.”
Diaz also confessed that while the life of a Hollywood star might seem glamorous, it was often overwhelming. “You’re responsible for all these multi-million-dollar pictures that you have to go out do your press for and market and all these things. It’s like, overwhelming.
“Your life becomes so narrow. Everyone is doing things for you, and you’re catered around. I never felt really truly comfortable with that.”
Diaz, 47, was nominated for four Golden Globes over the course of a 20-year career that ran from 1994-2014 , starring in movies such as “The Mask” (1994), “There’s Something About Mary” (1998) and “Vanilla Sky” (2001).