‘Shrek 5’ Star Cameron Diaz’s Team Told Her to Turn Down the Role That Made Her a Superstar

When Cameron Diaz landed her first movie role in ‘The Mask’ in 1994, she got it by the skin of her teeth, because she was a model rather than an actress. Opposite Jim Carrey, she drew immediate attention from Hollywood. Her career afterward was built more gradually than his.

Through the mid-1990s, Hollywood largely saw her as a rising romantic comedy star and sex symbol, thanks to films like ‘She’s the One,’ ‘Feeling Minnesota,’ ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ and ‘A Life Less Ordinary.’ A part in ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ showed a different side of her. By the end of the decade she had the status of a big Hollywood name, though she was not yet ranked alongside stars like Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan.

What changed that was a role she was reportedly urged to avoid. Far Out Magazine recently revisited the story. When Diaz was offered the part of Mary Jensen in ‘There’s Something About Mary’ in 1997, with production set to begin that December, her agent and manager reportedly told her not to give it serious thought. They saw the film as an insane idea and warned that it could end her career.

She ignored them, and the reason was simple. Diaz has said that when she first read the script, she laughed so hard she fell off her bed. The line that did it was a moment in which Mary’s brother punches Matt Dillon’s character in the throat. She was only five years into her acting career at the time.

Even after signing on, she had doubts. The Farrelly brothers asked her upfront whether she was comfortable with everything in the script, and she said yes. On the day of shooting the film’s most notorious scene, though, she had second thoughts, worried it could derail her career and discredit the character.

Bobby Farrelly later explained that the directors did not want to strong-arm her. They told her that if the audience reacted badly, they would take the scene out, and they let her make the call. It stayed in, and it became the film’s defining image.

The payoff was enormous. The film opened on July 15, 1998, through 20th Century Fox, and grossed over $369 million worldwide on a $23 million budget. That made it the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year.

The honors followed. Diaz earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, along with a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and an MTV Movie Award. Variety calls it her breakout moment, and in 2000, Total Film readers voted the movie the fourth-greatest comedy of all time. In the film, she plays an orthopedic surgeon who becomes the obsession of several men, including characters played by Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon.

Looking back, the advice she got now seems almost comical. Diaz has since returned to acting in Netflix’s ‘Back in Action’ opposite Jamie Foxx, while saying she reserves the right to say no to doing a movie ever again. After the ‘Mary’ experience, she has every reason to trust her own instincts.

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