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Leonardo DiCaprio: America was born in the streets ...
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Page 2
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Cameron Diaz loses herself in an 1800s-style tough girl ...
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Page 3
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Cameron and Leo: O.G.s with chemistry ...
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Rowland: I'm so used to seeing you in these funny, kick-butt, independent-type movies. Jenny Everdeane was very different. She was a kind woman, but a pickpocket. To me, she's just gangsta. I loved her. How was it to play her?
Cameron Diaz: I love playing characters that are far from me. ... It's almost more difficult to play yourself. Sometimes it's easier to lose yourself in a character, putting on the wig, putting on the teeth, wearing the clothes and painting your skin a lighter color. I did a lot of things to sort of disguise me in not such an obvious way. It's sometimes easier to lose yourself ... and do your work as that character rather than go to work everyday and look in the mirror and say, "Oh, there I am. And I don't feel like doing this today." You carry so much more into your day when you look exactly like you always look.
When I was doing "Being John Malkovich" I loved becoming Lotte every day. I just wanted to put the character on and live in her world. That was with Jenny, too. It was really wonderful to do that every day, because I went out into a world, a completely well-developed world. We lived in these sets that were just taking you back in time. So beautiful. The people and the costumes and horses and carriages and pigs and goats.
Rowland: And blood.
Diaz: And lots and lots of blood.
Rowland: Were you familiar with that era? Or did you have to research?
Diaz: I researched that specific era and the Civil War, more for what women were going through. What women had to deal with in that time. Women didn't have the right to vote. They had no rights whatsoever. They had nothing if they weren't being taken care of by a man. They were nothing. Women like Jenny died on the streets. They were victims of brutal crimes, they froze to death, starved to death. If they were whores they died of disease or someone killed them. There were no options for women back then. It was really interesting to see that because, being a woman today, you have every right for anything in this country. Luckily. And it's because of women like Jenny. She wasn't out fighting the political fight, but she was standing her ground as a woman every day.
Rowland:This was your first time working with Martin Scorcese. How did you feel when they were like, "You got the part"?
Diaz It's one of those experiences that cathartically, seven years from now, I'll be like "Oh my God!" I'll relieve the whole experience. ... Just auditioning with him, getting to go in and read with Leo [DiCaprio] and Marty, I was like, "This is it." I walked out of it and I literally said out loud, "If I don't get the job, it doesn't matter 'cuz I had that experience and that was more than I would ever hope to have had."
Rowland: They told us a story that your clothes got stolen.
Diaz: My room was broken into at a hotel in Rome. I had just come home, it was just before the holidays and so I had gone Christmas shopping. ... I had just gone to Turkey and got all this amazing beautiful Turkish jewelry and it was in my safe. I came home one day from work and was gonna go out to dinner. We had security there in Rome, but I asked him to wait just downstairs, I was gonna run up.
As I'm walking down the hall I see two guys walking out of what seems to be my bedroom. And I'm looking at [what they have]; it looks like my bag. And I'm like, "That can't be my bag or my room because those guys came out of it." As I'm walking past, I look down ... and that's my bag. That's my sh--. So I ran to my room, put my key in, opened the door, and my entire room was destroyed. ... Everything was broken, all my clothes were torn out of the closet.
I turned right around and I started running after them and I was screaming at them, "Hey! That's my sh--!." And I chased them down the stairwell. It was fully like in the movies, where they show you looking down in the stairwell and they're looking up. And I'm looking over and he's looking up. It was hilarious.
Rowland: Did you catch them?
Diaz: No, I didn't catch them. But they dropped everything on the stairwell. So I got everything back, like a miracle. It was hilarious. I ran into the street screaming for Francesco, my security. "Fra! They took my stuff!" And he's like [makes scared face], "I'm never letting you ever go anyplace without me again!" I'm like [waves dismissively]. It was just a fluke.
Rowland: You're working on "Charlie's Angels" right now, the second one. You did an incredible job in the first — four, five, six thumbs up. You're excited about this one?
Diaz: I love it. It's so much fun. I get to go to work every day with my best girlfriends and make a film. I just really love everybody that's involved, so much enthusiasm. We get to do the craziest, most ridiculous things every single day and we laugh all day long. It's the best. It's like, "This is my life? This is my job?" I can't believe it. I get to work with Martin Scorcese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Daniel Day-Lewis and then I get to make this movie which is just so much fun.
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Photo: MTV News
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