Cameron Diaz denies she ever dated George

From The ever reliable Sun. Ahem.


Have respect for yourself and for your body
Published: Today

CAMERON DIAZ has become one of Hollywood's biggest stars since making her name in 1994 box office hit The Mask with Jim Carrey.

Having had relationships with actors Matt Dillon and Jared Leto and singer Justin Timberlake, she is now dating baseball star Alex Rodriguez.

Here Cameron, 38, tells GARTH PEARCE how her mother's influence has kept her wild side in check.
"MY mom, Billie, was very open when talking about sex. She made me understand about taking care with boyfriends.

She knew that I was boy crazy, since the age of seven, so banned me from any dates until the age of 16.

But she was accepting of my interests. If my parents went to a party at a friend's house, they took both my sister Chimene, who is two years older, and myself. She treated us like adults.

When I started taking an interest in heavy metal, she drove me to my first Van Halen show.

She took a little TV and a cooler, with wine and cheese, and sat in there and did her needlepoint for two-and-a-half hours while I was at the gig.

My mom was an interesting mixture, being partly German, English and American Indian. She was a major rock 'n' roller and my dad - who was a mixture of Cuban and Spanish - would play Led Zeppelin records at night for all of us. But their rock 'n' roll tastes never included drugs. My mom always told me there was no responsible way of doing drugs.

She also opened my eyes to religion and what it meant to different people. There were a lot of different churches around where we lived in Long Beach, California.

She would drop me and my sister off at any of the churches we felt like attending. She said that whatever faith I wanted to follow would be up to me.

I pretty much believe in doing to others what you want done to you. Don't hurt people. Be a decent person. And I do believe in a higher being.

My first date was with Lawrence May, a football player from high school, who took me out in his Skylark car.

We came level with a car called a Pacer - so hideous that no one wanted to own one. I told him: "Rev up your engine. If that Pacer beats us, I am never going out with you again." That was the sort of girl I was - I could be difficult. When I did start going out with boys, I ended up with not having a lot to say to them.

I did not think I was attractive in my teens. But I started modelling at 16 and got attention from people I didn't think I would get attention from.

But where my mom's influence came in best was when I went to Japan to model. I was able to tell her everything I was doing and it was an incredible change in my life. I watched girls get screwed up, into drugs, gaining weight, stuck in Japan because they could not clear their debts to leave. I saw them lose it.

I thought: "I can either go that way too, or make a career."

I went out and had fun but with discipline. I would speak to my mom at weekends and respected the sort of upbringing I had enjoyed.

I did make one mistake, on a job in Australia. I went out drinking in the sun without paying attention to what I was consuming. I woke up in the morning so sick I didn't think I was going to live. I called my mother and said if I died, she had to come and get my body. It did not cure me from drinking but it cured me from being that stupid ever again.

I did not do casual dating for years because I had a boyfriend, a video producer called Carlos de la Torre, for five years.

It ended when I was 22. I always thought: "I am not looking for anybody else, because I am in love with this guy."

There were rumours shortly afterwards that George Clooney was my boyfriend. That was never the case. We just met, out and about.

My mom's warnings and influence, over the years, to respect myself and my body have really paid off.

I had a chance to be in the film The Crow, with Brandon Lee, who was a huge action star at the time. There was lots of nudity and a rape scene.

I was living in Paris, aged 19 or 20, and still pursuing my modelling career so this was a big opportunity. But I could not face the nudity and I turned it down.

Brandon was then accidentally killed while making The Crow. It was during a scene my character would have been in, so I would have witnessed it.

It was a career-changing decision for me. Had I not listened to my mom and taken my clothes off, there would have been loads of scripts along the same lines.

I would never have gone on to film The Mask with Jim and my life would have turned out completely differently."