Despite boasting an impressive and versatile resume, the bubbly blonde is best known for her star turns in romantic comedies such as The Holiday, There’s Something About Mary and What Happens In Vegas. Her output this year has been of a decidedly darker tone, however.

In My Sister’s Keeper, she earned plaudits playing a protective and tormented mother prepared to do anything to save her cancer-stricken daughter.In The Box, which opens this month, she also plays a mother who succumbs to the temptations of a charming stranger to try to give her child a chance at a better life.

Diaz is already bracing for the questions about whether these roles have a deeper significance for her.”Those roles were chosen for the stories that were being told,” Diaz says over the phone from Boston, where she is shooting a movie with Tom Cruise.”They both happened to be mothers, which turned out to be more a coincidence than anything else.I just thought they were interesting characters and interesting stories.

“It’s the same thing as playing a pickpocket in Gangs Of New York _ I didn’t really have the urge to go out and pick people’s pockets.”In What Happens In Vegas, I go out, get drunk and marry a stranger. I didn’t have any urge to do that either. It’s just a story.”

Diaz concedes, however, that her film choices tend to reflect “the rhythm” of her life at the time she accepts them.
She thinks in terms of tone rather than genre, how much she’s likely to enjoy making the movie and what she’s likely to gain from it in terms of personal satisfaction.

“Sometimes through life you want to laugh and have a good time and not think about anything. At other times, you’re pondering something that goes a bit deeper,” she says.At 37, and boasting powerful box-office clout as one of the highest-paid actors in the world, Diaz is at a time in her career when she can just about do whatever she pleases.

Despite Hollywood having an appalling track record of quality roles for women over 40, Diaz doesn’t feel like the clock is ticking in any way.Fifteen years after successfully making the transition from modelling to acting in The Mask, she still has no grand plan for career longevity, choosing to embrace each opportunity as it presents itself.

“I’m not 40 yet, and I don’t know what I’m going to want,” Diaz says.”I’m certainly not sitting here worrying. I’m just making the most of the life I’m living, as I’ve done all along.”At the very first press junket I did for The Mask, they asked me, `Where do you want to be in 10 years?’ and I just said, `happy’.

“I can give that same answer now. It’s more than 10 years later, and I’m still happy making movies.”And as long as I’m happy making movies, I’ll keep making movies.”If I’m not, then I’ll do something else that makes me happy.”

Making choices is central to Diaz’s role in The Box, a sci-fi thriller based on a 1970 short story (later made into a Twilight Zone episode) that has been adapted and directed by Donnie Darko writer/director Richard Kelly.Diaz says she was attracted to the movie’s idea that everybody is connected and all our actions have repercussions, for better or worse.

“There are six billion of us in the world, but we all affect one another’s day-to-day life with the choices we make,” she says.”All you can do is the best you can and try to make the most aware and conscious decisions that you can.”The ever-versatile Diaz is shifting gears again for her next project.

Apart from shooting the action-comedy film Wichita with friend and Vanilla Sky co-star Tom Cruise, she’s also finishing The Green Hornet, comedian Seth Rogen’s foray into the superhero genre.”That was a lot of fun,” Diaz says of working on The Green Hornet.”I loved working with Michel Gondry, and I loved working with Seth Rogen.”They’re awesome, fantastic people, and I can’t wait to get back and have more fun with them.”

Blink during either the 1950s or 1980s ”Twilight Zone” series’ and you’ll have missed a neat, scary little story about an enigmatic stranger who delivers a box to a struggling married couple. Push the button on the top of the box, he says, and you’ll get a huge sum of money while someone you don’t even will die.

It’s an obvious but very neat parable for the emotional consequences of choice we face every day, the idea actually based on a short story by Richard (I Am Legend) Matheson called Button, Button.

After its original publication in Playboy and two TV appearances, the latest iteration of the enduring tale comes from the mind of Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly. After the critical and commercial mauling of his last effort (”’Southland Tales”), Kelly and his backers are undoubtedly hoping for a more mainstream hit. But Kelly could no more keep mind-bending elements out of his films than Russ Meyer could make a movie without breasts. He takes the strong central conceit of the story and runs with it, constructing a whole world around the characters based – as it happens – on his own parents.

Norma (Diaz) and Arthur (Marsden) are happy but doing it tough. He’s a NASA engineer in a space exploration small Virginia company town, she’s a teacher and mother and they have a young son. When the horribly scarred but gentlemanly Arlington Steward (Langella) shows up on their doorstep with the titular box and makes his offer, the pair don’t know what to make of it. The button sits on top of an empty box and it seems like it’s either magic or Steward is insane or some sort of God.

In the expanded universe of Kelly’s take, both might be true. Among the many red herrings and confusing narrative anchors tossed about is Arthur C Clarke’s declaration that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It turns out Steward was once a quite normal scientist working on similar programs as Arthur, but that after being struck by lightning on a launch pad he died on the operating table but was revived a changed man.

Things go from weird to outright freaky and the movie becomes a real mystery story, from the creepy student who wants to see the disfigurement of Norma’s foot that causes her limp to the ephemeral doorways of light Arthur has to choose one of to go back home rather than be sent to what appears to be purgatory.

There’s an overarching story arc but most of the minutiae is a series of strange sequences, scenes and talismans you hope Kelly will explain to you before the film ends. He poses a lot more questions than he answers, and among the hypotheses you’re left with are that Steward was bought back to life by aliens after NASA programs unwittingly alerted them to the humanity’s presence and The Box is their way of testing our mettle before invading us. Or that he’s an angel sent to assess us on a case-by-case basis for admission to heaven.

Like ”Donnie Darko” you’ll need to watch it two or three times to decide if it’s a big parable for something completely different or just a weird story full of signature Kelly imagery.

Despite making you approach it much more than it’s prepared to come towards you, ”The Box” is a very successful exercise in mood and tone. Win Butler’s rambunctious soundtrack combines with a great sense of the mid 1970s to create a sense of menace that will keep you close to the edge of your seat, and though you’re never as sure as you want to be of what’s going on, the cinematic technique is brilliant.

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We have 3 new clips for you from “The Box” with thanks to themoviebox.net

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Variety reports that the James Mangold-directed action-comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz now has an official title – Knight & Day. The 20th Century Fox film had previously been known as “Wichita” and “Trouble Man.”

The movie, currently filming in Boston, also stars Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, Olivier Martinez, Paul Dano, Maggie Grace and Mark Blucas.

Knight & Day centers on a lonely woman (Diaz) whose seemingly harmless blind date suddenly turns her life upside-down when a super spy (Cruise) takes her on a violent worldwide journey to protect a powerful battery that holds the key to an infinite power source.

Mangold wrote the script with Scott Frank. The studio is planning a July 2, 2010 release.

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Thanks to my good friend Ellie we have a few more stills from The Box

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