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The song du jour on the radio right now might be Cobra Starship's Good Girls Go Bad, but in Hollywood golden girl Cameron Diaz's world, it's just the opposite.
Okay, maybe not "bad" per se, but she definitely has played the naughty vixen with the drop-dead bod and up-for-anything attitude.
You know, the kind boys dreamed about and blu-tacked on their walls, and girls secretly hated yet desperately wanted to have as a friend.
Who would have thought, 15 years later, she'd be the mothering sort?
From The Mask to There's Something About Mary to Charlie's Angels, the former model has acted, danced and giggled her way across the silver screen as Tinseltown's go-to gorgeous good-time girl.
But it seems even Cameron has to hit reboot once in a while. Playing a mother in not one but two films - the weepfest My Sister's Keeper is in cinemas now and the thriller The Box hits cinemas later this year - the 37-year-old seems poised to tackle a markedly darker, tougher and more mature side.
Perhaps playing a protective mother who is prepared to do anything to save her cancer-stricken daughter really can change a real-life singleton's perspective.
Or maybe it's just better than sitting around waiting for Charlie's Angels 3 to be made.
Playing a mum of teenagers for the very first time, was there any kind of hesitation or concern about going that route or was the material just too good to pass up?
Nick (Cassavetes, the director) brought me this script and it was a wonderful script. But I didn't really even think about (the fact) that I would be playing a mother.
I didn't think about it in terms of what it meant to my career. I thought of what it meant to the story, who this woman was, what her life experience was, and what was happening in front of her.
But I didn't think of it like, "Oh my god, if I play a mother - and a mother of teenagers - how is this going to affect my career?" It didn't even faze me.
Was there a specific scene with each of your 'daughters', Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva, that you really felt like you hit that (one) moment?
Every scene with them. They're really amazing. They're both extraordinary young women.
What was amazing about working with Abby was that I realised one day, we were on set, and you see her, and you're like, "Oh, she's this little girl and she's got so much power within her."
She is a warrior ... She can take all these things happening around her - very adult, very complicated, complex situations and ideas - and she's able to somehow put behind it something with more strength than I think you see in most people. I was amazed by how strong she is. She's just a powerhouse.
And working with Sofia, she is the most tender of tender. Everything is right there on the surface at all times. She has such a depth of feeling and emotion. And both of these girls were so generous with me as actors every day.
Sounds like you're a proud mother already. So, is it true that you cooked for the girls on-set?
I'd ask the kids, "What do you want to eat today?" Each of them got to pick on a day. Evan (Ellingson, who plays her son in the film) always wanted fajitas. Abigail wanted chilli-cheese fries. Sofia was on a special diet for the whole thing, so I would try to force her to eat stuff (laughs) she wasn't supposed to.
Motherhood seems so far removed in your real life. What was it like playing a mother, not actually being one yourself?
That's all we can do as actors - do the best that we can. We don't actually have the experience of it. (Sofia) looked like she was dying, but she was a jumping, vital young girl.
And same with myself - I'm not a parent, but I know what it is to love very deeply, something that I wouldn't want to have taken away from me. So, all we can do is just empathise with that. We can only guess what it might feel like from our experiences.
And we had a director who knew the closest to what that was. We were fortunate to have that director be as generous as he was in sharing what those emotions felt like, as Sofia said, on a very real level.
Very realistic, up front, unsympathetic at some points - just what the reality of that situation is, and to try to honour it the best that we could. We were fortunate to have that going for us.
Interview transcript courtesy Warner Brothers
My Sister's Keeper is in cinemas now.
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