Actress. Born August 30, 1972, in San Diego, California. The daughter of Emilio Diaz, a second-generation Cuban-American oil company foreman, and his wife Billie, who is of Native American, Italian, and German descent, Diaz began modeling when she was 16 years old. Her successful modeling career took her to Japan, Australia, Morocco, and Paris, among other locales, landed her in such magazines as Mademoiselle and Seventeen, and in advertising campaigns for such companies as Calvin Klein, Coca-Cola, and Levi’s.
In 1994, Diaz won her first film role in the blockbuster action-comedy The Mask, starring rubber-faced comic Jim Carrey. With no previous acting experience, she had originally auditioned for a supporting character in the film. Twelve callbacks later, however, she was hired to play torch-singing mob moll Tina Carlyle, the female lead. After the success of The Mask, Diaz was touted as the next big thing in Hollywood and wooed by a number of prominent filmmakers to appear in their projects.

While training to star in the live-action film version of the popular martial-arts video game Mortal Kombat, Diaz sustained a wrist injury, which caused her to back out of the film. Instead she made a string of smaller, independent films, including The Last Supper (1995); Feeling Minnesota (1996), costarring Keanu Reeves; She’s the One (1996), costarring Ed Burns and Jennifer Aniston; and Head Above Water (1996), costarring Harvey Keitel. She made a successful return to mainstream movies in 1997, winning raves for her portrayal of a sweet bride-to-be opposite Julia Roberts in the playful comedy hit My Best Friend’s Wedding.

After starring opposite Ewan McGregor in the uneven romantic comedy A Life Less Ordinary (1997), Diaz made the leap to A-list Hollywood stardom with her savvy comic turn in the unapologetically crude surprise summer blockbuster There’s Something About Mary, costarring Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon, and written and directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly. In 1999, audiences saw two very different sides of Diaz—first, she camouflaged her blond beauty to play a dowdy pet-shop worker and puppeteer’s wife in the much talked-about existential comedy Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze and costarring John Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Malkovich.