• December 28, 1998
• Vol. 50
• No. 24

Cameorn Diaz

As the Sweet Center of a Giddily Vulgar Comedy, She Was Really Something

Cameron is," says writer-director Bobby Farrelly, "an undeniable babe." But it's what's beneath that beauty—sporty confidence, absence of attitude and madcap point of view—that has made Cameron Diaz, star of this summer's There's Something About Mary, the $172-million-grossing comedy with the year's funniest gross-out scene, Hollywood's sexiest, silliest sweetheart. "I was at the vet, and it took the doctor half a breath before he said, 'Give my phone number to Cameron,' " says pal Dermot Mulroney, Diaz's costar (with Julia Roberts) in the 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding. "She really hit a nerve with guys." And you can count Christian Slater, her costar in Very Bad Things, among them. "I love her," says Slater. "I'd work with her anywhere."

So would Mary's creative team, brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly. On the set, Diaz, 26, "was one of the guys," says Bobby. "No matter what we were doing, shooting pool, guzzling beer, staying up all night doing something stupid, she was there." And while Diaz's eye-catching looks didn't go unnoticed, "you don't even think about sex when you're around her; it's purer than that," says Peter. "It's a thumpy kind of love, from the heart. She's so charming."

The Long Beach, Calif., native can also be thunderously loud. Mulroney describes her laugh as "blissful and explosive. It just comes popping out of her." Adds Bad Things producer Cindy Cowan: "She laughs from her stomach."

But then, Diaz, who made her movie debut in 1994's The Mask, has learned to trust her gut. When the former model was brought early on to acting coach Cameron Thor, "I said, 'Don't let this woman anywhere near an acting class,' " Thor recalls. "She's a rare natural." And by only her second film, The Last Supper, says its director, Stacy Title, Diaz had developed both the "old movie-star glamor of Rita Hayworth and the incredible timing and great physical comedy of Lucille Ball."

Diaz's Desi of more than two years, boyfriend and Mary costar Matt Dillon, is now reportedly out of the picture. But in any case, "I just live my life for me," says Diaz, who describes that life as "all good." From what we've seen, so is she.