Jamie Foxx recently discussed ‘Back in Action’ and Cameron Diaz in an interview with Vanity Fair. He shared his efforts to convince Diaz to return to acting and praised the meticulous approach the talented actress brought to the set once she accepted the role.
Foxx explained how he persuaded Diaz: “Cameron Diaz, back in action. Cameron Diaz is a national treasure. She’s done so many incredible movies. And trying to get her to come back, I said, ‘Cameron, listen, we got this movie. We promise that your feet won’t touch the ground, you’ll just have a good time. And if you just wave at your fans, there’s a lot of fans that are needing you. Think about it.’ She thought about it for a while and she came back.”
Her return brought along some expectations: “And then we were like, ‘Oh man, I hope we don’t shit the bed. I hope the movie’s actually good.’ But what was great about her when she got on the set, she would see things. ‘Okay, why don’t we put this here and put that there and do this, that and do this, that and the other.’ And so she was hands-on making sure that what you saw was amazing.”
Cameron Diaz retired from acting for 10 years before ‘Back in Action.’ In a separate interview, she expressed gratitude to Foxx for bringing her out of retirement. “To be privileged enough to still be able to come back and do a movie after 10 years, you know, to get to make movies still and do it at this level and to make something this entertaining and fun for everyone, that was, you know, to me, I felt really honored to be able to do and do it with Jamie,” she said.
She added, “It was really about the fact that I knew that if I was going to leave 10 hours a day, leave my family, that I was gonna get, you know, to do the work with, you know, the most talented man in showbiz. Professional, a fantastic partner. I knew that it was gonna be worth my while to go no matter what and that we’re going to have fun.”
In ‘Back in Action,’ available on Netflix, Foxx and Diaz play a married couple who are former CIA agents.
