Cameron Diaz Gets Candid About Returning To Acting After Lengthy Hiatus

Cameron Diaz is opening up about returning to acting after eight years away from Hollywood.

During an appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" Friday, Diaz talked about her role in director Seth Gordon's upcoming action-comedy Netflix film "Back in Action," in which she's set to star opposite Jamie Foxx.

The 50-year-old actress, who hasn't appeared in a film since playing Miss Hannigan in 2014's musical adaptation "Annie," admitted that she is "both" nervous and excited about getting back in front of the camera.

"It's a little bit of muscle memory, you know what I mean?" she told host Jimmy Fallon, according to E! News. "I did that for so long, it's kind of like the process, I kind of just fell back into it. But it feels a little bit different."

Diaz also said that it was "amazing" to return to acting alongside Foxx. The two previously co-starred in the 1999 sports drama "Any Given Sunday" and the "Annie" remake.

"The last movie I made was 'Annie' with Jamie, and so the first movie back is this film with Jamie," Diaz shared.

"He's so great, he's so easy, he's so professional, he's so talented. And just being able to work with him, it'll be so much fun," she gushed.

In addition to starring in the film, Foxx, 54, will also serve as an executive producer. Filming for the flick will start later this year.

During her eight-year hiatus, Diaz married Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden in 2015 and welcomed daughter Raddix four years later.

In a 2018 Entertainment Weekly interview with her "Sweetest Thing" co-stars Selma Blair and Christina Applegate, Diaz described herself as "semi-retired" and "retired."

Last year, the "Mask" actress shared her reason for not returning to acting, explaining that she was at "a different time in my life now."

"Now I'm here and this is the most fulfilling thing that I've ever done in my life. [To] have a family and be married and have our little nucleus of a family. It's just completely the best thing," she told Yahoo Finance Presents. "I don't have what it takes to give making a movie what it needs to be made. All of my energy is here."

In an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow that was posted online to Goop in 2020, Diaz explained that she felt she wasn't in control of her time when she was more regularly working on films.

"You're there for 12 hours a day," she said at the time of film sets. "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, and they took it."

An unnamed insider told Us Weekly in March that Diaz feels she "made the right choice to put work-life balance first instead of chasing stardom and filming movies all over the country."