DOUBLE OR NOTHING
JUST WHEN CAMERON DIAZ THOUGHT SHE WAS OUT JAMIE FOXX PULLED HER BACK IN A DECADE AFTER SHE RETIRED FROM ACTING DIAZ HAS REUNITED WITH HER OLD BUDDY FOR BACK IN ACTION. WE SIT DOWN WITH THEM TO DISCUSS WHY THIS DREAM TEAM JUST CAN'T QUIT
WORDS OLLY RICHARDS
After finishing work on a remake of
Annie,
in which she played foster-home matriarch Miss Hannigan, Diaz called an end to her Hollywood career, which had generated over $3 billion in the US alone and seen her work with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise.
That retirement, however, is now over.
Diaz returns next month in Back In Action, a family action-comedy, and in a sense she’s picking up where she left off. It reunites her with Jamie Foxx, her co-star in Annie (he played entrepreneur Will Stacks), as well as Oliver Stone’s 1999 sports drama Any Given Sunday.
Here they play Emily and Matt, a pair of spies who fall in love while working undercover and leave their dangerous world to start a family. However, after 15 years, in which they’ve become just another suburban couple with two kids, a secret from their past comes back to haunt them and forces the couple to brush off their espionage skills. Directed by Seth Gordon, and also starring Glenn Close as Emily’s mother, Andrew Scott as a British intelligence chief, and Jamie Demetriou as a wannabe agent of limited intelligence, Back In Action sees Diaz and Foxx tearing across the world trying to juggle international terrorist incidents and childcare.
We got the pair together again to talk about action, about Diaz stepping back into the industry she swore she was done with, and about a devastating medical incident Foxx suffered during production on the film. For both of them, this reunion marked a huge milestone in their lives, and cemented a friendship that’s been nearly three decades in the making. But is Diaz back for good?
Cameron, this is the first movie you’ve made in ten years. How did it happen? Did Jamie call and persuade you, or were you looking to act again?