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Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American film actress.
Diaz was born and raised in San Diego, California. Her father is from Cuba. After pursuing a modelling career, she was cast in the commercially successful 1994 Jim Carrey film The Mask. Her role was minimal and essentially embodied the stereotypical "pretty blonde girl" that is oft to be found in cinema.
However, she subsequently took roles in films with more substantial subject matter such as Feeling Minnesota. She stood out as a "perfect" fiancée in the romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and many consider her role in the crude comedy There's Something About Mary (1998) to be her real break-through performance.
Diaz then veered away from mainstream cinema into independent film with the quirky Being John Malkovich (1999) and Oliver Stone took risks when he gave her a role in Any Given Sunday (1999). Both films enjoyed critical and commercial success and critics heralded Diaz's performances.
Diaz is widely considered to be an extremely attractive woman, and as such has been listed in "sexiest" and "most beautiful" lists in various periodicals including FHM and People.
In 2004 an old S&M video, where Diaz appeared when she was 19 years old, was leaked out on the Internet. The video was a recording of a S&M photo session with Diaz and another girl torturing a man. Diaz has filed a suit against the Russian Internet site distributing the video, but this has attracted enough attention to this obscure video to temporarily make it very popular on the Net. The file is now distributed by many porn sites and can be downloaded from any major Peer-to-peer (P2P) network.