The career-defining 1994 role that almost caused Cameron Diaz a nervous breakdown: “I got an ulcer”
Following over a decade away from Hollywood, Cameron Diaz made her return to acting in 2025 with the appropriately-titled comedy, Back in Action.
The star had chosen to prioritise her family over work, drawing a temporary line under a very impressive career. From a string of hit comedies in the 1990s to more mature roles in the 2000s to lending her voice to one of the most successful animated film franchises of all time, nobody would have been disappointed if she’d called it quits in 2014, especially as Back in Action was thoroughly mediocre.
The role that really brought Diaz to the dance was The Mask. As Tina Carlyle, a glamorous singer, she becomes embroiled in the wild life of Stanley Ipkiss, played by Jim Carrey, after he discovers the titular magical face covering. The movie established her as a sex symbol, especially the particularly gratuitous full-body tilt towards the beginning of the runtime, and opened pretty much all of the doors that would make her a household name.
Prior to her big acting break, Diaz worked as a model, which involved her jetting around the world (and once accidentally becoming a drug mule) for the company Elite Model Management, who would eventually help her land the gig on The Mask. As she explained to Entertainment Weekly in 1994, the young star of tomorrow found her very first movie role to be quite stressful.
”I was ready to have a nervous breakdown,” she said, ”I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I got an ulcer… I thought I was going to throw up my first day. I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to disappoint them, and they’re going to fire me’.”
Diaz would have been in her early 20s when The Mask began filming. As I said earlier, she’d never been in a movie before. In fact, this was her first acting job of any kind ever. So, there she was, standing opposite a bona fide superstar in Carrey, who was in the middle of the run of his life, and naturally, it made sense that she was nervous.
In the end, all of those nerves were for nought, for the team behind The Mask clearly knew they were on to something special, as they completely rewrote the character of Tina to better fit Diaz. She was initially going to be a villain who used Stanley for his power, but this was changed to make her more sympathetic. Not only was The Mask a massive hit, but Diaz was singled out in many reviews for her work, with the great Roger Ebert referring to her as “a true discovery” in his review.
Given how much was riding on The Mask, her inexperience as an actor, and the calibre of the production, nobody can blame Diaz for worrying that she wasn’t going to do a good enough job. Perhaps she found some solace in her co-star, who also felt massively uncomfortable on set, albeit for very different reasons.
