Why Cameron Diaz didn't shave her head for 'My Sister's Keeper'
Cameron Diaz plays the tough-as-nails mother of a sick daughter in “My Sister’s Keeper." She gives birth to a second child to provide organ transplants for her ailing eldest. Things get complicated when the second daughter, played by Abigail Breslin, decides to sue her parents, played by Diaz and Jason Patric.
In the admittedly creepy-weepy-sounding but reportedly uplifting film, Diaz's character is seen shaving her head. And as we reported last year, she kinda looks a friendlier Dr. Evil.
But she tells the Dish Rag that she didn't really make the cut. Why? Because she needed to be bald for only one day of shooting. She also didn't wear makeup. "No makeup. It was so fantastic. It was great. It took so much time off of when you have to get up and be ready. No makeup. It was great.
But her 15-year-old costar Sofia Vassilieva totally went for it.
“I have so much respect for this child because she shaved her head when she was 15 years old. She had hair down to here. She shaved her head, she shaved her eyebrows, and she owned it. I mean, she was scared at first. I won’t say that she … she pushed through that fear, and I was just so inspired by her. She was an inspiration to us all. At the end of the day, she’d have the makeup artist paint all these things around her head and paint around her eyes and wear these big these earrings and like big scarves. She just really owned it and sort of made it something special for herself."
To research her role, Cameron talked at The City of Hope with mothers with seriously ill children.
“Although their circumstances might be different, whether it was economics or the dynamics of their families, maybe not married or separated from their husbands or divorced or whatever, the one thing that was the same for all of them was that when you have a sick child, all you do is try to save that child. There’s nothing else. You don’t go, 'Oh, no, it’s OK, don’t worry about it. It will be fine.' Or you don’t say, 'Oh, there’s nothing else we can do? OK, cool.' It’s like there’s a vigilance that these mothers have to take part in and be there 24 hours a day, and they know what treatments their child should be having.”
Because of her unrelenting responsibilities, Sara is often not a particularly sympathetic character.
“She’s a mother who’s trying to save a child and what is she supposed to do?" says Diaz. "You know what I mean? She’s been doing it for a decade now. She’s been trying to keep her child alive. It’s really, really exhausting. It’s no time for her to be apathetic. There’s never a moment that she can just sort of lay down and go, 'No, I don’t give a. ...' There’s just not. Even when she’s in remission, there’s not because you’re always waiting for that moment that happens in the movie where she’s up all night with 103 temperature and she has nose bleeds. I mean, that could happen at any moment."
Source