Amid a return from an eight-year hiatus, actress Cameron Diaz is now revealing she was once, unwittingly, a "mule carrying drugs to Morocco."
Diaz recounted how she got her start in acting after a fruitless year as an aspiring model in Paris, France, before her big 1994 Hollywood break in "The Mask" with Jim Carrey.
"I was there a full year and didn't work one day," Diaz, 49, told Second Life podcast host Hillary Kerr. "I couldn't book a job to save my life. Then I got one job but, really, I think I was a mule carrying drugs to Morocco — I swear to God."
Diaz said she was told to take a "locked suitcase" carrying "outfits" from Paris to Morocco for a modeling gig, but did not realize there were drugs inside until she was at the airport.
She said she handed over the drug-filled suitcase just weeks before getting her Hollywood break in "The Mask."
Diaz is returning to acting with actor Jamie Foxx in the comedy "Back in Action" after resigning herself to retirement.
"This was the early '90s, and they gave me a locked suitcase that had my 'costumes' in it," Diaz said. "I'm this blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in Morocco. I'm wearing torn jeans and platform boots, with my hair down — this is really unsafe. I told them, 'I don't know, it's not mine; I've no idea whose it is.'
"That was the only job I got in Paris."
Diaz would have faced a 10-year drug trafficking charge, but she turned the suitcase in and returned to Paris without having completed the one job she had been given in Paris, she claimed.
Diaz noted "The Mask" casting agents were looking for a "bombshell," and she got the role over the late Playmate and covergirl Anna Nicole Smith.
"I don't act, that's not what I do," Diaz recalls telling the agent.
"I had just started my period. There was no way I was putting on anything sexy that day. I was like, 'Are you kidding?'"
After starring in "There's Something About Mary," "The Holiday," "What Happens in Vegas," and "Charlie's Angels," among others, Diaz went into retirement in 2014 to focus on her family with husband Benji Madden and daughter Raddix, according to the Daily Mail.
Diaz said she was "convinced out of retirement" by both Foxx and football star Tom Brady for "Back in Action."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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