It’s this image of Diaz that fans know best—the hot babe who’s not afraid to look like a big ol’ dork, burping, tripping over her feet and blurting out ditzy things. At this year’s Oscars, Diaz’s presentation almost seemed self-parody; she bungled “cinematography,” pronouncing it “cinnamon-atography” before quickly recovering her poise and hamming it up for the crowd with an exaggerated “Oh, I can do it!” On a recent episode of Oprah she called in to commend her best friend Drew Barrymore’s million-dollar donation to the World Food Programme and ended up babbling on so long that Winfrey had to step in and cut her off practically midsentence.
This goofy-meets-gorgeous combination has proved to be a winning one: According to The Hollywood Reporter, she’s the third-highest paid actress in Hollywood (after Reese Witherspoon and Angelina Jolie), commanding $15 million a movie. For her work in last year’s Shrek the Third, she reportedly took home twice that, thanks to a profit-sharing deal.
In her latest film, What Happens in Vegas, opening in May, the slapstick Diaz again comes out to play. She stars as Joy McNally, an uptight Wall Street trader who, after a bad breakup, heads to Sin City for a weekend of fun. There, she meets a ne’er-do-well furniture maker (Ashton Kutcher) and, after a night of drunken groping, ends up marrying him in a quickie wedding chapel. The next morning, of course, the two realize that they kind of hate each other. But before they can annul their union they win a $3 million slot machine jackpot together, and a judge orders them to live as man and wife for six months or forfeit the cash. They shack up in his filthy bachelor pad, undergo court-ordered couples counseling with Queen Latifah and, well, you can guess what happens in the end.
The movie is hardly Shakespeare—or even romantic comedy on the level of The Holiday, thanks to a few too many gags about leaving the toilet seat up—but Diaz and Kutcher have palpable chemistry and look great together, sort of like the homecoming king and queen of Hollywood. The costars were already attached to the project when director Tom Vaughan (Starter for 10) was approached about the film, and that, he says, was “the major reason to make the movie. I thought, Why has no one done this before? It’s so obvious.”
Diaz signed on because, she says, “I just really wanted to spend the summer having a good time and laughing and enjoying myself.” And, from the sound of it, she did. The early scenes are shot in Las Vegas, a city she’s grown quite fond of after 15 years of wild weekends at the craps and roulette tables. “I looooove Vegas. It’s such an easy trip from L.A., and there’s always a hotel room because there’s about a billion of them,” she says, before adding with a laugh, “but honestly, you don’t even really need one if you’re just going for the weekend!”
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