Cameron Diaz, 47, is thoroughly enjoying her life off the Hollywood red carpets and out of the box office films. The actress, who retired from the movie industry after acting in her 2014 films, sat down for a video chat with fellow actress Gwyneth Paltrow, 47, on the Aug. 5 episode of Gwyneth’s show In Goop Health: The Sessions, which you can watch above, and revealed that she’s felt “peace” after walking away from her movie career. “Like peace. A peace in my soul because I was finally taking care of myself,” she said during the video chat.
“It’s a strange thing to say, I know a lot of people won’t understand it, I know you understand it, but it was so intense to work at that level and be that public and put yourself out there,” she continued. “There’s a lot of energy coming at you at all times when you’re really visible as an actor and doing press and putting yourself out there.”
Cameron also went on to describe herself as being “sensitive to some energies” that would bother her sometimes when she was active in the industry and admitted it helped her to stop and think about what she was doing and what she wanted to do. “I stopped and really looked at my life,” she said. “When you’re making a movie … they own you. You’re there for 12 hours a day for months on end you have no time for anything else.
“I realized I handed off parts of my life to all these other people,” she added. “I had to basically take it back and take responsibility for my own life.” It was when she turned 40 that she really realized what her next step should be. “I had been going so hard for so long, working, making films, such a grind. I didn’t make any space for my personal life,” she explained.
Her personal life then became top priority when she married Benji Madden, 41, in 2015 and they welcomed their daughter Raddix earlier this year. “We got married pretty much immediately because we realized we just had to do it,” Cameron said about Benji on Gwyneth’s show. “We went hard for a few years where we just ironed [our relationship] out, hacked it out. It was a lot of work, but we had to. I’m older than him, not a lot older, but he was at the place in his life where he also wanted to do that as well.”
