Cameron Forever

There’s something about the late ’90s Cameron Diaz that just worked—not because she was stunning or because everyone said so, but because she seemed to actually enjoy being in the frame. In *There’s Something About Mary*, she wasn’t playing sexy, she was just there, funny and unselfconscious. She made comedy look like something you could do without calculating every movement, which is maybe the hardest thing any actor can do.

I know the culture moved on. She moved on too, stepped back from it all. But there’s something specific about that window—early Diaz, before the machinery of fame got heavy—that still holds up when you go back. Those films feel like they’re from another planet now, which probably says more about where we are than where she was.

I think about that version of her sometimes and remember what it felt like to watch movies that weren’t anxious about themselves, that weren’t trying to be Important. Just someone on screen having a genuinely good time, and you could feel it.