Cameron Diaz was the highest-paid Hollywood actress over 40 (and the 5th highest-grossing actress of all time) when she walked away from the business in 2016 at age 44.
She initially said she was tired of all the traveling that came along with acting and needed a break, but confirmed in 2018 that she was done. Last year she said in an interview:
Actors are infantilized. We’re put in a position where everything is taken care of for us. You go to set, everybody wants to carry your bag and you’re not allowed to do anything — God forbid something happens to you, then they can’t finish the movie and you’re already on film.
You’re responsible for all these multi-million dollar pictures that you have to go out, do your press for and market and all these things. It’s like, overwhelming. Your life becomes so narrow. Everyone is doing things for you, and you’re catered around. I never felt really, truly comfortable with that.
I needed to become self-sufficient again. I really needed to know that I could take care of myself, that I knew how to be an adult, that I knew how to navigate the complexity of being an adult and having responsibility and putting all the pieces of my life together the way I wanted it to be put together — not the way other people thought it should go.
Diaz, who married musician Benji Madden in 2015, gave birth to a daughter in 2019, and in 2020, launched her own line of organic wines called Avaline. She appears to have no regrets about leaving acting behind.
“I got a peace in my soul. Because I was finally taking care of myself”.