What is Cameron Diaz's net worth and salary?
Cameron Diaz is a California-born model and actress who has a net worth of $140 million. Cameron Diaz became an international star in 1994 after appearing alongside Jim Carrey in "The Mask." She has maintained an A-list presence ever since, appearing in dozens of movies and earning hundreds of millions of dollars from acting salaries alone. With total box office ticket sales north of $7 billion, Cameron is currently the fifth highest-grossing U.S. actress. She took a break from acting between 2014 and 2024.
After getting her start as a model appearing in ads for Calvin Klein and Levi's and on the cover of Seventeen Magazine, among other publications, she shifted her focus to acting. After a brief tiptoe into the world of the soft-core porn industry, she auditioned for a role in a comedy opposite an up-and-coming actor named Jim Carrey. The movie in which she was eventually cast, "The Mask," went on to become one of the highest-grossing feature projects of that year, and she was on her way. The next few years were spent honing her craft through acting lessons and appearances in smaller, independent projects. Her strategy paid off, and when she returned to appearing in mainstream projects, she was a better actress and a bigger box office draw. Since then, she has appeared in such projects as "Feeling Minnesota," "My Best Friend's Wedding," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "There's Something About Mary," "Being John Malkovich," "Charlie's Angels" franchise, "Vanilla Sky," "Gangs of New York," "My Sister's Keeper," "Bad Teacher," and "What to Expect When You're Expecting," among many other films.
Early Life
Cameron Diaz was born on August 30, 1972 in San Diego, California. She was raised in Long Beach, California. For high school, she attended Long Beach Polytechnic, where she was classmates with Snoop Dogg.
Diaz has characterized her upbringing as frugal. Her family collected soda cans to turn in for extra money because that $20 meant something to them.
Blonde, leggy, and gorgeous, Cameron signed with Elite Model Management at 16 and quickly began modeling professionally. During her first five years of modeling, she landed many high-profile fashion campaigns and print work while living abroad in such places as Japan, Australia, and Paris.
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Success
At 21, Diaz returned home to Southern California and, despite having no acting experience, auditioned for and won the female lead role opposite Jim Carrey in the 1994 film "The Mask". She took her first acting class AFTER landing the role. The movie was a huge hit, grossing more than $340 million worldwide, and turned Cameron into an instant star.
More film work rolled in over the next few years, including 1997's "My Best Friend's Wedding." A year later, Cameron's career would jump yet another level after she starred in the titular role in the comedy "There's Something About Mary. That movie grossed $369 million worldwide and garnered Diaz her first Golden Globe nomination. Further award nominations shortly followed for her role in "Being John Malkovich," which was an instantaneous critical success. Diaz was featured in other successful films, such as "Charlie's Angels" (grossing $264 million worldwide), "Vanilla Sky," for which Diaz also received four prestigious award nominations, and the Academy Award-winning film "Gangs of New York."
Other Diaz films include "In Her Shoes," "The Holiday," "What Happens in Vegas," "My Sister's Keeper," "Knight and Day," "The Green Hornet," "Bad Teacher," "Sex Tape," "Annie," and more.
Diaz provided the voice of Princess Fiona in the Shrek franchise, with the second film, "Shrek 2", grossing $919 million worldwide.
Notable Salaries
During the peak of her career, from 1998 to 2011, Cameron earned more than $160 million from base film salaries. Today, her minimum salary is $10 million for a starring role, and that number has reached as high as $20 million. She earned $2 million for "There's Something About Mary". She earned $12 million for "Charlie's Angels" and then $20 million for the sequel "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" (which was directed by McG). She was the third actress in history to crack the $20 million movie paycheck milestone. She earned $17.5 million for "Gangs of New York".
For the first "Shrek" movie, Cameron earned $3 million. For the 2004 sequel, she earned $10 million.
To lure her out of a decade-long retirement, Netflix paid Cameron $45 million to star in two Netflix movies.
Bad Teacher Paycheck
For 2011's "Bad Teacher," Cameron took a massive pay cut – $1 million upfront – in exchange for a lucrative percentage of the film's backend gross. The movie went on to earn more than $210 million worldwide, and when it was all said and done, Cameron walked away with $42 million. That's enough to be one of the 20 highest single-film paychecks ever earned by an actor.
(Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
Retirement
Cameron retired from acting in 2014 and stuck to that announcement until it was revealed in June 2022 that she would make a comeback and star alongside Jamie Foxx in a Netflix action-comedy called "Back in Action."
Diaz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2009.
Personal Life
Cameron has been married to Good Charlotte founder Benji Madden since 2015. They were introduced by Nicole Richie, who has been married to Benji's brother Joel since 2010. In December 2019, the couple welcomed a daughter via surrogate.
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Real Estate
Cameron owns and has owned a number of impressive properties around the US, primarily in New York and California. In 2001 she spent $1.34 million for a home above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. She sold this property to Ariana Grande in 2022 for $4.9 million. Diaz still owns a much larger Beverly Hills compound that she picked up in 2010 for $9.5 million from fellow actress Candice Bergen. Nicole Richie and Joel Madden live a few houses down the block in a home that Nicole purchased in 2015 for $6.7 million.
In New York, Cameron, for many years, owned a loft in Greenwich Village, which she sold in 2015 for $4 million. But don't worry, Cameron still has a place to rest her head in NYC thanks to the $9.5 million condo she picked up in 2013 in the Chelsea neighborhood.
In 2022, Diaz and Madden purchased an 11,000-square-foot mansion in Montecito, California, for $12.67 million.
In October 2020, Cameron and Benji paid $14.7 million for a new mansion in Beverly Hills. The 9,000-square-foot home has seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms and sits on 1.7 acres. The house is located in a gated community at the top of Beverly Hills. They listed this home for sale in Jule 2024 for $17.8 million. Here is a video tour:
