Cameron Diaz says she laughed off sexism in Hollywood in order to 'get through unscathed'

Cameron Diaz said she took roles like those in "Charlie's Angels" and "Shrek" that diverged from typical narrative expectations for women.

• Cameron Diaz said that she laughed off misogyny in Hollywood to get by in the industry.
• The former actor said that the 1990s and early 2000s were full of "heavy misogyny" in Hollywood.
• Diaz said that she took certain roles, like in "Shrek," that subverted typical female narratives. 

Cameron Diaz said that she would laugh through "heavy, heavy misogyny" in Hollywood, particularly in the 1990s and early aughts, when she said there were stricter "parameters" about the amount of what could be done regarding sexism in the industry. 

On Tuesday's episode of the BBC podcast "Michelle Visage's Rule Breakers," Diaz said that she took roles in films such as "Charlie's Angels" and "Shrek" that subverted typical narratives for women in film. That included the "anti-fairytale" message in "Shrek," or the desire she and costars Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu had to be "badass women" in "Charlie's Angels," Diaz told Visage.

"I certainly didn't do as much as could be done now because of the awareness of everybody, you know, sort of like the #MeToo," Diaz said. "The 1990s, the early aughts, there was still heavy, heavy misogyny. Just the level of exploitation of powers, it just laid on the entire industry."

"It was the normal thing to do sort of like" — she lets out a superficial laugh — "and just be able to get through unscathed," she continued. "Be the one who participated enough to make everybody feel taken care of, but not be a victim. Be in that position, but to know how to navigate the whole thing because it was happening all day every day."

Diaz, as she recounted to Visage, made the jump into acting from modeling with the 1994 film "The Mask," where she starred opposite Jim Carrey. She later retired from acting in 2018, telling Gwyneth Paltrow in a 2020 interview that she had found "peace" in her "soul" since,  saying that she felt like she had "handed off parts of her life" to other people and citing the pressures of working as an actor. She reiterated the same sentiments about quitting acting in an August 2021 interview with Kevin Hart.

"Fame is very infantilizing. It's very much about keeping somebody coddled in a state of like, we see a little child and think, 'It's so cute, I want it to always be cute, and if I keep it cute by always treating it cute, maybe it'll stay cute forever.' And that's how people treat you,'" she told Visage on the podcast.