When Cameron Diaz accidentally became a drug mule: “I swear to god”
If you went to movies in the late 1990s or 2000s, chances are you saw several films starring Cameron Diaz.
In an era full of sex symbols, the Texan proved that she was one who could actually act. She became Queen of the romcom, finding great success in the likes of The Holiday, What Happens in Vegas, and There’s Something About Mary. Dramatic roles in Vanilla Sky and Gangs of New York also followed, as she quickly established herself as a star who could do it all.
Before she found success on the big screen, Diaz was working as a model. She signed her first contract at the age of 16 and went on to appear in ad campaigns for top brands like Levi’s and Calvin Klein. A gig for Coca-Cola saw her relocate to Australia in 1991, and she even landed the cover spot for Seventeen magazine when she herself was only 17. It wasn’t all glitz and glamour, however.
Speaking on the Second Life podcast, Diaz, who came out of retirement in 2025 after over a decade away from the screen, spoke about the early days of her modelling career. Desperate to make it big in the fashion world, she moved to Paris in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, that didn’t help her find work, and the jobs she could keep down weren’t exactly high-end.
“I was there a full year and didn’t work one day. I couldn’t book a job to save my life. Then I got one job, but really, I think I was a mule carrying drugs to Morocco,” she revealed. “I swear to God.”
Diaz explained that she was told to travel to the African country with a suitcase full of ‘costumes’ for an upcoming modelling job. In reality, the case was locked, so Diaz had absolutely no idea what was inside. Only when she landed and asked what she was carrying did the enormity of the situation dawn on her.
“What the fuck is in that suitcase?” she remembers thinking. “I’m like this blonde-haired blue-eyed girl in Morocco, it’s the ’90s, I’m wearing torn jeans and platform boots and my hair down. I’m like… this is really unsafe.”
She told the airport staff that she hadn’t packed the case and therefore had no idea what was in it, managing to get off scot-free. This was a pre-9/11 world, of course – something like this would never happen today.
Diaz is far from the only famous face to get caught up in something like this. Bollywood star Chrisann Pereira was arrested in the United Arab Emirates for carrying drugs, only to be released after it was discovered she had been framed as part of a revenge plot. Jake Weber, an actor who was in Meet Joe Black and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, admitted that his father used to use him and his brother Charles to smuggle drugs to The Rolling Stones when they were living as tax exiles.
Shortly after her terrifying ordeal, Diaz decided she’d had enough of Paris and moved back to the US. She ended up in Los Angeles, where she was encouraged to audition for an upcoming movie. That movie turned out to be The Mask, and the rest was history. Thank God the Moroccan airport security team were so lax, otherwise her first movie might have ended up being a real-life remake of Midnight Express.
