Cameron Diaz stepped back from acting because she was struggling to manage her life ‘as a human being’

Actor’s last film was the 2014 adaptation of ‘Annie’

Cameron Diaz has explained her decision to step away from acting, saying her film career was preventing her from managing other parts of her life.

The actor, 48, is known for films including There’s Something About Mary, Charlie’s Angels and The Holiday. Her last movie was the 2014 adaptation of Annie, in which she played Hannigan.

Speaking to actor and comedian Kevin Hart on his new talk show, Hart to Heart, she said: “When you do something at a really high level for a long period of time, when you’re the person that is delivering one thing, you’re the person on the screen, all parts of you that isn’t that has to sort of be handed off to other people.”

She said this included “different parts of my life, my home, every aspect, from finance, just the management of me as a human being, not me as Cameron Diaz the machine”.

Diaz added: “For my personal, spiritual self, I was realising that that one part of me that functioned at a high level wasn’t enough. It’s fun to do, I love it, I love acting, I could go forever, I sometimes feel like I have unlimited energy and inertia.

“I just looked around and there were so many parts of my life that I wasn’t touching and that I wasn’t managing, and I couldn’t really manage, because everything was so massive.”

Cameron Diaz in ‘The Holiday’ (Columbia/Universal)

Diaz said she reached this conclusion when she was around 40, and it gave her the opportunity to reassess every aspect of her life.

She added: “I have a lot of great friends and incredible people who supported me for so long, and I believe it’s about the people you have in your life who help you keep things moving.

“I had some amazing people but I had other people who were not serving my best interests always, but you don’t have time to figure those things out if you are just going with blinders on, you’re in the tunnel. For me, I just really wanted to make my life manageable by me. My routine in a day is literally what I can manage to do by myself. It’s the best feeling, I feel whole.”

Diaz, who is married to Good Charlotte star Benji Madden, with whom she welcomed daughter Raddix in December 2019, said: “I met my husband, we started a family, all the things I didn’t have time for before, and not just the time for but didn’t have the space to make the decisions, the right decision for me at the time.”

Additional reporting by Press Association