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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- We know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are literally millions of eyes beholding model-turned-actress Cameron Diaz.
And most of them seem to like what they see in the blonde who exploded into the public eye as Jim Carrey's object of desire in The Mask.
Like the name of her latest movie, She's The One, Diaz is rapidly becoming The One. At least, she is one amongst the clutch of rising young Hollywood femme fatale stars looking to rival Julia Roberts, Demi Moore and Sandra Bullock for prominence. Being beautiful doesn't hurt at all in this quest.
Even Diaz, her own worst critic, is happy with herself -- occasionally. "Some days I look in the mirror and say: 'You're not too shabby, kid!' "
Of course, there are other, more difficult days, she admits, "and I look and I say: 'Jesus Crimminy, you better clean yourself up. You need help!'"
Diaz, who won a 'star of tomorrow' award from the film distribution and exhibition industry earlier this year, is walking a fine line. She knows that her genetic endowments -- bone structure, sparkling eyes, lithe body -- are important.
"I would sound like an idiot if I said I did not believe that people find me attractive," Diaz muses, looking oddly beautiful even on a day when her sinuses are plugged up with a cold and her nose is red from blowing into tissues. Stripped of makeup, her blond hair ragged, she still is getting away with it.
"I made a living for many years doing so, looking beautiful, putting myself forward," she says of her modelling years. Like the ad says of another model, don't hate her because she's beautiful. "Beauty is something that terrifies a lot of people. I think they are afraid of it. I think they desperately want to look at it but it hurts."
Now, as a relative newcomer to acting, she is willing to use what she was born with, that physical aura. But she knows there is more to it, much more. She even knows there are people who might be ready to dump on her looks, just as there is a coterie of men who find Julia Roberts ugly.
And Roberts' name is a sensitive issue for Diaz right now, because she is currently shooting a film with the beleaguered superstar. It is Muriel's Wedding director P.J. Hogan's new romantic comedy, My Best Friend's Wedding. Diaz, for the record, adores Roberts.
"I think she's also incredibly beautiful. Yet I know guys who say: 'I don't get it!' But I'm working with her and I love looking at her. Why not? She's just so damned gorgeous. I have no problem with a beautiful woman. It's a nice thing to have access to. To look at her brings me just a little bit of joy!"
Watching Roberts is also a good lesson in fame survival. At least it makes her cautious.
"I give her a lot of credit," Diaz says of Roberts. "I wouldn't want to be in her position at all. I would like to have success, but not that sort of invasion of privacy that she's had to deal with."
The invasion is getting more intense, says Diaz. "I think that people are getting more ruthless, definitely. I think it's really an evil thing. I don't think anyone really knows how to deal with it. If anyone could imagine!
"I challenge any normal person who lives a regular life, who has family and friends that they enjoy spending time with, to all of a sudden have people with cameras in their faces documenting what they do in their personal time.
"There is nothing that makes you comfortable with that," she continues. "There is no reason why you should be comfortable with that just because you're a celebrity or an actor. I think that actors give enough of themselves on screen. That's their job. Their job is not to display what they do on their own time."
Giving on screen is the part of the equation Diaz is trying hard to do with more conviction, more emotion and better technique. That means taking roles that are not necessarily easy routes to big success in Hollywood.
An example is her part as Heather in She's The One, the first film from actor-writer-director Ed Burns since the surprise success of his debut, The Brothers McMullen. Diaz plays a woman who is part vamp, part scamp and part tramp, a nefarious schemer who is the wedge between the Brothers Fitzpatrick, one played by Burns and one by Mike McGlone (who also co-starred in The Brothers McMullen).
In her next release, Feeling Minnesota, Diaz plays another golddigger, who ends up in the arms of Keanu Reeves' loser character the same night she marries Reeves' brother. In her previous movie, The Last Supper, Diaz was one of a group of liberal yuppies who murder people whose views they don't find agreeable.
Diaz says she is taking these movies for the opportunity to learn. She still remembers how green she was on The Mask. "I was a model when I did that, and then I made the decision to quit that (profession) and take the chance. What The Mask did for me was give me the opportunity to meet people I wouldn't normally get to meet as a beginner: executives, directors, writers and producers. I was given a lot better material than I probably would have been given without the success of a film such as The Mask.
"The Last Supper was perfect for me because it gave me the opportunity to work with other actors. It was an ensemble piece. I didn't have any pressure whatsoever. I didn't have to carry the load of an entire film and I got to learn from really incredibly talented actors who gave me a lot of help and support."
That led to Feeling Minnesota and She's The One.
"I had more confidence at that point," Diaz says. "I never would have been able to do Feeling Minnesota if I had not done The Last Supper. I would have completely fallen apart and they would have kicked me off the set."
That experience fortified her for the next one, Diaz says. "Everything happens for a reason and hopefully, in that experience, you learn a lesson and you take that lesson to the next one."
One lesson, she says, is that beauty is only the beginning.