You might wonder why you haven’t seen Cameron Diaz in a while. It’s pretty simple, she’s done with acting and has decided to retire. Quite honestly she has a good reason, she wants to spend more time with her family and really it’s not like she needs to keep working since she’s amassed a pretty healthy fortune. With some wise and sound investments and some planning she could easily coast along on what she’s made in her career and be just fine. But throughout the years it also seems that Diaz has been dipping a little in the popularity polls even if she was still a prominent actor all the way up until 2014 when she performed her final role in Annie.

She’d been seen in a lot of different movies from the time she came on the scene to her final film and quite honestly she took on a few different roles that set her apart from others. Many times she was the sex symbol as she was in The Mask, but she was also cast in part such as Charlie’s Angel’s were she was something just a little more as well. In films like The Counselor she was undeniable a sexualized character but she was still something else that was quite dangerous as she turned out to be the main antagonist. Throughout all her roles Diaz proved that she had the talent and the savvy to bring a character to life and own it just enough to make people believe in it. One of her more confusing roles came as Lotte Schwartz in Being John Malkovich, as she was required to ditch the ravishing good looks she’d become so well known for in order to rock the mousy brown hair and simple woman look. It worked as people couldn’t believe it was her at first, but were equally stunned and pleasantly amazed her ability to pull it off.

Another role that deviated slightly from others was that of Christina Pagniacci from Any Given Sunday, a cold and very shrewd business woman that warred constantly with Coach Tony D’Amato, played by Al Pacino, and saw the players on her pro football team as commodities rather than people. That character was simply over the top mean and as nasty as anyone could possibly be as she thought of her team as nothing more than her shot at becoming a big wig in the pro football world no matter what. It showed another side of her ability that people hadn’t quite seen yet, and invited viewers into yet another facet of her talent that was kind of scary in a way since she was that into the character.

Her first role, pictured above, as Tina Carlyle, is what really got her noticed though. She was a vixen through and through and played the part beautifully. There was some talk about how she might have had reservations about the role, but what she delivered to the screen was so wonderfully done that people immediately wanted more. Here’s hoping that her retirement goes well.