Cameron Diaz has revealed she could be convinced to return to her breakout role as Tina Carlyle in a proposed reboot of The Mask.
The San Diego-born actor, 52, made her film debut at the age of 21 in the 1994 superhero comedy, starring opposite Jim Carrey.
Speaking to Access Hollywood, Diaz joked she would happily return: “If Jim’s on board, I mean, I’ve been riding those coattails from day one.”
Last month, Carrey was asked about the idea of rebooting The Mask. “Oh gosh, you know, it has to be the right idea. If somebody had the right idea, I guess…It’s not really about the money,” Carrey told ComicBook. “I joke about the money…But I never know. You can’t be definite about these things.”
He added: “I said I’d like to retire, but I think I was talking more about power-resting. Because as soon as a good idea comes your way, or a group of people that you really enjoyed working with and stuff, it just – things tend to change.”
Diaz, who also starred in Charlie’s Angels and There’s Something About Mary, has come out of acting retirement after eight years to star in a new comedy alongside Jamie Foxx in Netflix’s Back in Action.
Diaz’s return to the screen has been welcomed by critics including The Independent’s Adam White, who wrote this week that her work has always been underrated.
“Diaz occupied this strange state of pseudo-ironic acclaim throughout her early celebrity,” argued White. “She was a performer propelled to stardom by her innate glow, her sprite-like sass and her sex appeal, but for whom real, earnest approval always seemed punishingly out of reach. And it was only when she retired from acting in 2015 – in an effort, she said, to ‘reclaim’ her life – that many decided to take another look at her.
“Diaz made acting look like a lark, carrying with her an ease and naturalism that is typically overlooked in favour of batten-down-the-hatches histrionics. Shouldn’t we have appreciated her more as Tom Cruise’s scorned ex in Vanilla Sky, or for the sensitivity she brought to the role of a frizzy-haired, chimp-petting sadsack in Being John Malkovich? Whither her Oscar for In Her Shoes?”
When The Mask was released in 1994, it marked the second of three career-making comedies released that year, along with Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, that turned Jim Carrey into a box office sensation.
