Cameron Diaz he’s grateful to have been away from the sport for 10 years – but he’s glad he’s back.

“Oh my God, I love it. It was the best 10 years of my life,” said Diaz, 52, on Friday, January 17, The Graham Norton Show about quitting his filmmaking career. “I was free to say, ‘I am a mother, I am a woman, and I am living my life.’

Diaz’s last project before taking a 10-year hiatus was 2014’s Annie, in which she co-starred. Jamie Foxx. She and Foxx, 57, both star on Netflix Back in Actionwhich first appeared on the platform on Friday.

Diaz went on to say that quitting “was the best decision for (her) family at the time, like she and her husband. Benji Maddenwhom he married in 2015, they share two children: daughter Raddix, born in 2019, and son Cardinal, born in 2024. Diaz also said that after a while “people stopped asking him” to take on new roles. “It was great,” he said.

Related: Inside Cameron Diaz’s Comeback After Hitting the Break

Cameron Diaz was at her peak. When Annie starred in 2014, it became her 38th film in 20 years. “It’s very difficult to work at that level and be in the public eye and put yourself out there,” she told her friend Gwyneth Paltrow in a 2020 Goop interview. “There is a lot of energy coming (…)

Diaz has given several reasons why he decided to make another movie – Foxx being his price in Back in Action among them. However, he also explained why he decided to return to the silver screen.

“It is a great privilege to do this,” he told the visitor Graham Norton about doing. “I just said to myself, when I leave this, the best, everything I’ve been doing for a long time, my passion is to entertain people and make movies that (make) people smile and laugh and have a good time, and they stay in the theater or they stay at home and it moves them – if I don’t participate in this and give another chance and participate and be grateful for it, I’d be a fool.”

Even if they come back, it is not clear if this will be a permanent career for the actress. “This is maybe the beginning, maybe I’ll just go inside, maybe I’ll go gung-ho, we’ll see,” he said. “It’s here and I’m very grateful for it.”

Earlier this month, a he told the source Us Weekly that Diaz’s decision to act again “evolved over time,” adding, “It wasn’t sudden.”

In the interview of December 2024 and KingdomDiaz also said that it is “hard to say” if he will make another film after that Back in Actionto say, “I have the right to refuse to show a film again, and I have the right to accept it if I choose to do so.”

Back in Action now streaming on Netflix.