Cameron Diaz Says She Stepped Back From Acting to Make Her Life 'Manageable'

The 48-year-old star announced in 2018 that she was "retired" from acting.

Cameron Diaz shocked fans in 2018 when she revealed she was "retired" from acting, and now she's explaining why she chose to step back from the film industry.

During a recent interview with Kevin Hart on his Peacock talk show, Hart to Heart, Diaz is asked what motivated her to retire. The A-lister tells Hart that "when you do something at a really high level for a long period of time," there are parts of your life that end up being "handed off to other people."

Diaz said she only started realizing this around age 40 when there were a lot of parts of her life she "wasn't touching" and "wasn't managing."

"For me, I just really wanted to make my life manageable by me," she shared of her decision. "My routine in a day is literally what I can manage to do by myself."

Diaz said that since making the choice to stop acting, she's been able to put focus on areas of her life that she "didn't have time for before," and revealed that she feels "whole." 

In March, Diaz spoke to Yahoo Finance Presents about how her outlook on life changed and her priorities shifted after she and husband Benji Madden welcomed their daughter, Raddix, in December 2019. 

"It's just a different time in my life now," she explained. "Now I'm here and this is the most fulfilling thing that I've ever done in my life. [To] have a family and be married and have our little nucleus of a family. It's just completely the best thing. So I can't give...I don't have what it takes to give making a movie what it needs to be made. All of my energy is here."

Diaz -- whose last role was in the 2014 remake of Annie -- confirmed during a March 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly that she had retired. Since then, she hasn't shied away about how she's found "peace" since closing that chapter of her life. 

"I just decided that I wanted different things out of my life," Diaz told Gwyneth Paltrow in August 2020. "I had gone so hard for so long, working, making films, and it's such a grind. And I didn't make any space for my personal life. And then I decided to stop making movies and really focus on my personal life, my personal relationships with my family, my friends. And then Benji and I met each other and we got married pretty much immediately because we both knew that we both had to do it."

For more on Diaz's life with Madden, watch the video below.

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