'Matt is an amazing person and I love him incredibly. The lessons I learn from him will carry me through my life.' Cameron Diaz
Liberty-sized torch for Mary Jenson (Diaz). so he hires sleazy private dick Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) to track her down. But Healy is a pathological liar who gets the hots for Mary and spins Ted the line that his gorgeous old flame has become a fat mail-order bride. What follows is crude. rude. stupid. offensive. tasteless and. crucially. a right good laugh.
'The Farrelly brothers cross every line in this movie.’ laughs Diaz. ‘It‘s outrageous and totally unique. The thing you learn very quickly with Peter and Bobby is that you can never go too far.’
It’s hardly a shock to find that Diaz enjoyed playing a woman who couldn‘t be more irresistible to the opposite sex if she took a bath in Impulse and opened a pub in her bedroom.
‘I‘m a man‘s dream girl.. she confirms. ‘I'm the girl who eats everything. who doesn’t shop. who drinks beer. plays golf and shares the same interests as her boyfriend.‘
Speaking of boyfriends. the Mary shoot saw Diaz working with real-life beau Matt Dillon for the first time. The pair met in 1996 in the lobby of a Minnesota hotel. but didn’t get it together until a year later. when Dillon called and asked her out. The relationship seemed to be working out. despite the small matter of a
continent between them — like all the best aspiring film-stars she lives in Los Angeles. while scuzzy urban hipster Dillon has his place in New York.
However. the pair recently split after Dillon had a fling with Mariah Carey. Ironically. Carey is heavy metal fan Diaz's most hated pop act.
‘If you really want to torture me. strap me down to a chair and put
Mariah Carey on. Over and over again. That would be eternal hell for
me.‘ she bitches.
On Dillon. however. she is more forgiving.
‘I loved working with him. He is an amazing person and I love him incredibly. I think the lessons I learn from him will carry me through my lifetime.‘ she says. rather touchingly.
The irony is that the first time Diaz gets to act with her heart-throb boyfriend. he plays a gross-out sleaze. There '3' Something About Mary required Dillon to exchange his famous sulky good looks for a slimeball makeover of bad teeth. worse clothes and a pencil moustache like an anorexic caterpillar.
‘The fake teeth looked like the world's worst cap job. and between scenes he‘d be kidding around. like. “Come here. baby. give me a kiss". I was like. “Please just stay away from me.” she laughs. ‘But the weird thing
CAMERON DIAZ
Cameron's career: in (left to right) My Best Friend's Wedding,
A Life Less Ordinary. Ihe Mask, Feeling Minnesota, She‘s ‘I’he One. the Last Supperand with Matt Dillon in Ihere's Something About Mary
is. even with the teeth and the moustache and the extra weight and the ugly clothes. I still found him incredibly sexy. I really had to work to pretend he was unsavoury to me.. Whether on-screen (romping with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards in Wild Things) or off (a rumoured romance with Kylie Minogue). Dillon‘s sexual charisma is beyond doubt. In fact. he was allegedly spotted cuddling up to a mystery blonde in Miami during the making of There '3‘ Something About Mary. Speaking before the split. Diaz said ‘I trust Matt and he trusts me. We know who we are together. so it really doesn‘t matter what other people think they observe or try to create.‘ Having a stormy romance with Matt Dillon and revealing a genuine talent for comedy in blockbusting movies is a far cry from flogging fizzy pop to the Ozzies — one of Diaz‘s many commercials as a jobbing model. She was a pretty sixteen-year- old. starstruck at a glitzy Hollywood party. when a photographer approached her and suggested that hers was the kind of face that could make bucks of the fast variety. After getting over her initial impression that the snapper was some old perv on the prowl. Diaz signed to the Elite agency.
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24 See—8 Oct 1998 THE lIST7