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Actress. Born
August 30, 1972, in San Diego, California. The daughter of Emilio Diaz, a
second-generation Cuban-American oil company foreman, and his wife Billie,
who is of Native American, Italian, and German descent, Diaz began modeling
when she was 16 years old. Her successful modeling career took her to Japan,
Australia, Morocco, and Paris, among other locales, landed her in such
magazines as Mademoiselle and Seventeen, and in advertising
campaigns for such companies as Calvin Klein, Coca-Cola, and Levi�s.
In 1994, Diaz won her first film role in the blockbuster action-comedy
The Mask, starring rubber-faced comic Jim Carrey. With no previous
acting experience, she had originally auditioned for a supporting character
in the film. Twelve callbacks later, however, she was hired to play
torch-singing mob moll Tina Carlyle, the female lead. After the success of
The Mask, Diaz was touted as the next big thing in Hollywood and
wooed by a number of prominent filmmakers to appear in their projects.
While training to star in the live-action film version of the popular
martial-arts video game Mortal Kombat, Diaz sustained a wrist injury,
which caused her to back out of the film. Instead she made a string of
smaller, independent films, including The Last Supper (1995);
Feeling Minnesota (1996), costarring Keanu Reeves; She�s the One
(1996), costarring Ed Burns and Jennifer Aniston; and Head Above Water
(1996), costarring Harvey Keitel. She made a successful return to mainstream
movies in 1997, winning raves for her portrayal of a sweet bride-to-be
opposite Julia Roberts in the playful comedy hit My Best Friend�s Wedding.
After starring opposite Ewan McGregor in the uneven romantic comedy A
Life Less Ordinary (1997), Diaz made the leap to A-list Hollywood
stardom with her savvy comic turn in the unapologetically crude surprise
summer blockbuster There�s Something About Mary, costarring Ben
Stiller and Matt Dillon, and written and directed by Bobby and Peter
Farrelly. In 1999, audiences saw two very different sides of Diaz�first, she
camouflaged her blond beauty to play a dowdy pet-shop worker and puppeteer�s
wife in the much talked-about existential comedy Being John Malkovich,
directed by Spike Jonze and costarring John Cusack, Catherine Keener, and
Malkovich. Later that year, she turned in a brazen performance as the
glamorous, hard-nosed new owner of a professional football team in Oliver
Stone�s Any Given Sunday, costarring Al Pacino and Dennis Quaid.
Despite her undeniable box office appeal, Diaz continued to appear in
relatively low-budget independent films�including the black comedy Very
Bad Things (1998), Malkovich, and the ensemble film Things You
Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000), which aired on Showtime cable
television in 2001 and costarred Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, and Calista
Flockhart�as well as more mainstream projects. In the fall of 2000, she
starred alongside Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu as one of the three female
detectives at the heart of the hit big-screen remake of Aaron Spelling�s
campy 1970s television show, Charlie�s Angels.
In early 2001, Diaz appeared as a free spirited older sister in The
Invisible Circus. She also provided the voice for the spirited Princess
Fiona in that summer's animated hit Shrek, also featuring the voices
of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. Her upcoming projects include Martin
Scorsese�s Gangs of New York, costarring Leonardo DiCaprio, and
Cameron Crowe�s Vanilla Sky, costarring Tom Cruise (both 2001).
Diaz�s five-year relationship with video producer Carlos de La Torre
ended in 1995. She dated her There�s Something About Mary costar Matt
Dillon from 1996 to 1998. In 1999, she began dating the actor Jared Leto.
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