  Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher (Handout)
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Behaving badly isn't always rewarded in Hollywood.
Particularly if you're a) a woman and b) starring in a comedy.
It's something Cameron Diaz learned nine years ago when she starred in The Sweetest Thing, a raunchy farce that bombed at the box office and reinforced the long-held notion that moviegoers prefer their chick flicks romantic and saccharine -- not vulgar and profane.
Now the 38-year-old is starring in Bad Teacher -- quaffing liquor, dropping F-bombs and giving the degenerates of The Hangover a run for their debauchery -- at a time when the tides of taste appears to have turned.
Case in point: The sleeper hit Bridesmaids, a female-driven "anti-chick flick" that grossed more than $100 million in its first month of release. Bad Teacher's fortunes may reveal whether Bridesmaids is a fluke or if the glass ceiling has truly been shattered.
"Women have always behaved badly. I think probably worse than men. Maybe men just don't have the stomach for it. They don't want to see it on film because they just can't take it," Diaz says. "Any of my guy friends, when I tell them what women really talk about, they don't want to hear it. But maybe it's time "¦ People are willing to laugh at those things."
Opening Friday, Bad Teacher stars Diaz as Elizabeth Halsey, a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking public school educator desperate to get breast implants so she can sink her claws into some unwitting sugar daddy.
"Obviously, if I thought I could get somewhere with bigger boobies, I would have done it by now," Diaz says with a laugh. "But for her, it's everything. It's called hard economic times. You can't find a millionaire like you could, three or four years ago "¦ It's an investment. (Financial expert) Suze Orman would've been like, 'Girl, find your plan.' So yeah, she's working hard for those (breasts)."
Which in Los Angeles, frankly, doesn't sound so far-fetched. "Especially in this town, we know what it's like to come across people who have their priorities screwed up."
Along with Diaz, the movie stars Jason Segel, Lucy Punch and Justin Timberlake as the target of Elizabeth's self-serving affections. The rest of the ensemble is rounded out by such comedy veterans as Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins, Molly Shannon and Thomas Lennon.
"We just got really funny people to play every single part," says director Jake Kasdan, whose credits include TV's Freaks and Geeks and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
That said, it is Diaz who carries the movie as she smokes weed, hurtles basketballs at students, conspires to ruin her rival, rigs test scores and swats back the advances of Segel's laid-back gym teacher.
"As a male who enjoys hearing those dirty things that women say, I think funny women have been around forever," Timberlake says. "Carol Burnett, Madeline Kahn -- there have always been genius female actors in comedy "¦ It's a great thing to see a female can do it and do it as well as Cameron does."
Says Diaz, "This script would have been just as hilarious with it being a male role as a female. It shows that you can make something funny for everyone."
Just as it shows that being funny means never having to say you're sorry, she explains.
"There was absolutely not one ounce of energy spent on making anything about this character likable. It was genius. It was what I loved. I read 30 pages into the script and thought, 'There's no way I can play this character. How can I ever redeem her? There's no redemption. This is a horrible person.' And 10 pages later, I was like, 'I think I like her.' By the end, I was like, 'This is amazing because I don't have to apologize.'
"That's the beauty of this script. Usually you spend the last 20 minutes of the movie trying to apologize for the first hour and a half of it because people are afraid of just owning what it is. In life, we don't just have an epiphany and change our entire life. It happens, but it's not the norm "¦ If people like her at all it's because she's honest and people wish they could be as honest as she is."
Of course, Diaz and Timberlake share a history, having dated for four years. One sign there are no hard feelings? Not only do they share the screen, but they have a love scene, albeit one in which neither takes their clothes off.
"I think we created the only dry humping scene ever in a movie," Timberlake says. "Jake wasn't literally between us, but figuratively he was. He was my humping coach. I got to say there's nothing wrong with a good jean jam "¦ It's a public service announcement. Nobody ever got pregnant with their jeans on."
Adds Diaz, "That's pretty much the only message in the movie that we're proud of."
For all the bad judgment portrayed, though, there was one line this bad teacher wouldn't cross -- namely, hooking up with one of her students.
"I don't think I would be down with that," Diaz says. "That would be a different movie clearly."
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