Cameron Diaz: "I'm Not Childless...I Can Have a Kid Any Second, If I Want"

"It's not like I'm the spinster who didn't have a child," the actress told the U.K. Telegraph

By Alyssa Toomey Apr 22, 2014 5:05 PMTags
Cameron Diaz Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

Cameron Diaz may not have chosen the path of motherhood, but that doesn't mean the 41-year-old beauty feels a void in her life.

"I've never said never to anything in life. If I wanted kids, at any point in life, I would have them," the Other Woman star tells the U.K. Telegraph in a candid new interview. "But I'm certain that if at any point I wanted a child, that child would find its way into my life, whether through adoption, or through being in a relationship with somebody who has a child."

Diaz, who has been romantically linked to high-profile hotties such as Justin Timberlake and Alex Rodriguez, continued, saying that she still feels like a mother at times even though she doesn't have children of her own.

"I can't see the future, but one thing I do know is that I'm not childless. I have a ton of children in my life. I can have a kid any second, if I want. All my friends would be like, 'Sure, come and get them,'" she said with a laugh.

"I also, by the way, have a lot of girl friends who don't have children," the actress continued. "It's not like I'm the spinster who didn't have a child. I just didn't do that in life, and I'm OK with that. I know the choices I made. I know why I made them. I'm very much a person who lives in the moment. When you come from where I do, there are so many ways my life could have gone."

Life has clearly rewarded the thesp, although Diaz's roots are undoubtedly different than your average actress in Tinseltown, having attended a large inner-city school in Long Beach with a constant police presence. "It was stark and barren, but it was multicultural, and I think it gave me tools to relate to people and understand them," she explained. "We had to learn to get along. Not that everybody did all of the time. There was violence. You have that many kids, there's bound to be conflict. I learnt to be good at being friends with everyone. You have to be tough, especially when you're a skinny white girl."

While her upbringing taught her a number of valuable life lessons, the idea of acting as a career seemed incredibly far-fetched. "Where I grew up, the options were slim to nothing. In any given year there were at least seven to 10 girls walking around school pregnant," she said. "A lot dropped out. A lot ended going to jail, dying or falling victim to drug abuse. But there were also a lot who pulled themselves out of it—[like] Snoop and I," she said, referring to the rapper Snoop Dogg, who was a fellow classmate. "And some of them have a family and a nice job and live comfortably."

Diaz's upcoming film The Other Woman, which also stars Kate Upton and Leslie Mann, hits theaters on Friday.