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player ready...Director Curtis Hanson says Cameron Diaz will surprise audiences with her role in “In Her Shoes,” which opens Friday.
“This girl, I can’t tell you how much … well, just how proud I am of her,” he said, giving the beaming actress a paternal pat on the knee.
Diaz, one of the most sought-after actors in the movie business, looked at him with the grateful face of a kid who has just received the biggest, most heartfelt compliment of her life.
“Whatever happens, I owe him,” Diaz said. “He’s right there when you need him, and I’m not ashamed to say I needed him a lot.”
Diaz co-stars with Toni Collette in “In Her Shoes,” a film based on a best-selling novel by Jennifer Weiner. Weiner’s book tells the story of two sisters who grew up in Philadelphia. One is a well-regarded lawyer who could be considered plain, and the younger one is an irresponsible knockout who uses her sexual allure to get through life. When the older sister reaches her breaking point, she washes her hands of the younger and, with the estrangement, both women go unexpected places.
Hanson knew Diaz only through her work before they met to talk about the film. Diaz had expressed interest, even though she hadn’t read the screenplay.
“We clicked right away, so I was a little hesitant to tell her that Maggie, the character she would be playing, was not just the mixed-up party girl,” Hanson said. “So I said, ‘Look, this woman is not promiscuous in a really cute way. She sleeps with people to get what she wants. She lies. She steals. She’s screwed up. If she was your sister, you’d kick her out too.’
“And I think she said something like, ‘Cool, that sounds like something I would really like to do.’ “
“I’m not a big script reader, but I went home and read it in one go, and I was really excited,” Diaz said. “Scared, too, but definitely excited. That’s the book on me. If I finish it, I shoot it.”
The first thought Hanson had for casting Rose, the good sister, was Collette.
“We really did feel like sisters,” Diaz said, “and sisters can get pretty mean because they know each other so well. They know the buttons to push.”
Collette, who put on 25 pounds to play Rose–weight that Rose loses during the course of the film–has two brothers but says she had no problem relating to Diaz.
“We grew closer than actors usually do with co-stars–at least female co-stars,” Collette said.
She said they also enjoyed the company of Shirley MacLaine, who plays the grandmother they thought was dead. The venerable actor is not always known to cozy up with her fellow performers.
“It was respect all around,” Diaz said. “Coming from the top, beginning with Curtis. It was the best working experience I’ve ever had. It definitely inspired me to look fresh at my career and the direction I want to go.
“In fact, I made a big decision: I want to make all my movies with Curtis.”
The Diaz file
Born: Aug. 30, 1972, in San Diego
Personal: Friends call her Cami. No word on what beau Justin Timberlake calls her.
First film: Female lead in “The Mask” with Jim Carrey (1994).
Recent TV gig: Host of “Trippin’ ” on MTV, leading celeb pals on eco-trips “in the name of Mother Nature.”
Things she’s broken: Her nose in a surfing accident; her engagement to Jared Leto; and her wrist before filming “Mortal Kombat” (the reason Bridgette Wilson got the role of Sonya Blade).
Salaries from a handful of films:
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– “Shrek” ($3 million)
– “Shrek 2” ($10 million)
– “Charlie’s Angels” ($12 million)
– “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” ($20 million)
– “Any Given Sunday” ($500,000)
SOURCES: WWW.IMDB.COM; WWW.ANSWER.COM
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Edited by Curt Wagner ([email protected])