Cameron gets serious for tough role in modern-day morality tale
After years of playing the ditzy blonde known for having one of the broadest smiles in Hollywood, Cameron Diaz is moving on.
While best known for roles in comedies like Charlie's Angels and last year's What Happens In Vegas, her latest film, an adaptation of Jodi Picoult's heart-wrenching novel My Sister's Keeper is something of a departure.
Playing mother Sara Fitzgerald, whose child is dying from leukaemia, she chooses to have a second child by IVF as a blood and marrow donor for her first daughter, Kate.
"It was a nice stepping stone in the experience of life," says the 36-year-old actress.
"I feel like Sara is a warrior. She can't be apathetic one second of the day.
"Even when her daughter is in remission, she can't say, 'Oh, well, now I can breathe', because at any moment there might be a 103C temperature and nose-bleeds, and it all begins again."
To research the role, Cameron met mothers with sick children who were going through the same experience as Sara.
"Their personal circumstances were different, but they all said that there's just not a moment that you aren't focused on keeping your child alive," she says.
"Whether it's reading the charts to make sure that the doctors are doing their job, or thinking, 'If this treatment doesn't work, what's next?'
"What's so wonderful with this film is that you see how it's not just one person's story – it's not just a mother losing a daughter, it's a sister losing a sister or a brother losing a sister, a family losing their family together, all of them suffering separately as well as together."
The film co-stars 13-year-old Abigail Breslin, best known for her Oscar-nominated turn in 2007's Little Miss Sunshine, as the youngest daughter, Anna, who sues her parents for the medical rights to her own body, when she's expected to donate a kidney to her older sister.
Exploring the feelings of each family member and the complex relationships between them, the film is an unflinching portrayal of how different people cope with the prospect of death.
"Death is certain and unchangeable, but Sara spends her entire time trying to stop the inevitable from happening," says Diaz.
"We think we can change the outcome of things by sheer will, but, ultimately, there are certain truths we cannot change."
In this age of test-tube babies, the film also throws up the moral quandary of whether it's right to have a child as an organ donor for a sick sibling.
"I didn't make the film as a moral statement," she says. "However, making the decision to allow a child to die seems to go against every fibre of a parent."
Growing up on the golden beaches of San Diego, Diaz became a model after leaving high school at 16. She got her first acting break at 21, when she auditioned for The Mask without any formal training. But it was the 1998 comedy There's Something About Mary, alongside Ben Stiller, that would make her name as a comic actress.
Over the next 10 years, she worked her way up to become the highest-earning woman in Hollywood, raking in $15m a movie, and one of the most written about.
Her personal life has been widely documented, especially her rocky relationship with pop star Justin Timberlake, which came to an end in 2007, and the death of her father from pneumonia in April last year.
Today, she's passionate about her family – and says the film echoes her bond with her older sister Chimene.
"It's one of the most intense bonds, being with somebody from the time you enter the world and being that close to one another."
She recently said she wouldn't rule out having children of her own one day, but for now she's happy just to be an aunt.
"My sister has four children. And watching her kids with each other is just amazing," Cameron says, with a broad smile.
"As you get older, you see things, and you remember when you were a kid and people said, 'Oh, wait until you get older, you will understand'. And then you go, 'Ah! I understand'."
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