FIRST FEATURE
BE DAZZLED
By Jason Johnson
June 25, 2010
A scientific study published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology last year determined that exposure to a beautiful woman will actually impair the functioning of a male brain.
Just try to imagine the number of impaired male brains that Cameron Diaz, 37, must have encountered over the years.
Height: 173 cm.
Weight: 54 kg.
Hair: Blonde.
Smile: Dazzling.
Now that’s a recipe for reducing men to stupidity if ever there was one.
But for all of her beauty, the thing that really impresses about Diaz is her talent.
She may be a former model, but Hollywood is filled with former models who never amounted to squat.
Remember that Cindy Crawford movie? Of course you don’t.
In her new film Knight And Day, Diaz is required to do much more than simply look good.
The flick is an action-comedy-romance. Hence Diaz must do stunts, be funny and make her co-star Tom Cruise swoon.
In a recent interview, director James Mangold (Walk The Line, 3:10 To Yuma) gave some indication as to why she’s earning a reported US$10 million (S$14million) to appear in the picture as June Havens, an ordinary working-class woman who restores old cars for a living but gets caught up in a globetrotting adventure after bumping into Cruise’s mysterious character Roy Miller at the airport.
‘I honestly can’t think of another woman who could have done so much in the role of June,’ he said.
‘Cameron is unique in that she’s glamorous, beautiful, a great actress and at the same time is comically gifted and incredibly physically able.
‘Who else could so perfectly capture a girl-next-door swept into a grand adventure and at the same time be able to handle all the physical demands of this movie?’
The point is, Diaz is special.
But then why take our word for it when you can ask her co-star Cruise, who first collaborated with her on Vanilla Sky (2001).
‘As soon as we took on these roles, I could not wait to see what Cameron was going to do with her character,’ he said.
‘I always wanted to make this kind of movie with Cameron. I was really excited about it because I enjoy her work in action movies.
‘She’s talented, funny, athletic and a great actress. This was such a winning character. I knew she’d give a winning performance.’
Of course, one might wonder what the point is of just saying an actress is great and quoting a lot of other people who say she’s great.
Well, it’s very easy to take an actress like Diaz for granted and sometimes it’s nice to sit back and appreciate what we have in someone like her.
From the bubblegum fun of Charlie’s Angels to the uber-strangeness of Being John Malkovich, from the pyrotechnics of Any Given Sunday to the poignancy of My Sister’s Keeper, Diaz has carved out a career full of delightful surprises and has brought nothing less than complete commitment to each of her roles.
In Knight And Day, she seems to bring together all the considerable skills she’s amassed over the years to bear on a character that is required to be ditzy one moment and kick-butt the very next.
All the while, remember, running and jumping and fighting and driving and shooting. And looking hot while she’s doing it.
Diaz seems characteristically enthusiastic about what she has created in June.
‘She goes from a woman who doesn’t have any idea what her capabilities are, who only ever dreamed of adventure, into someone who realises that yes, she can drive, she can shoot and she can stay right with Roy,’ Diaz said.
‘What I love about June’s journey is that she has been holding back in her life and when she meets Roy, it becomes a now-or-never moment for her to seize the day. Roy unlocks that in her.
‘Meanwhile, Roy is this renegade adventurer who thinks he is always seizing the day, but he has never seized the one thing he really wants and needs: Love.’
Whether or not our hero Roy does end up ‘seizing the love’, we’ll leave you to discover for yourself.
But as for us, we did so long ago.
Diaz makes us just a tad dizzy.
The NewPaper