CAMERON’S AGEING GOAL - ‘I’ll be Diaz-ling at 110!’

Back in action and about to turn 50, the actress has a new healthy mindset

As one of the most beautiful - and bankable - stars in Hollywood, it's hard to imagine Cameron Diaz has been anything except in hot demand.

But before the Charlie's Angels star became an A-list actress, she tried her hand at modelling and spent a year in Paris living hand-to-mouth.

"I was there a full year and didn't work one day," Cameron lamented recently. "I couldn't book a job to save my life."

Finally, when she did get work, it could have landed her in prison. It was the early '90s and the job, she says, required her to carry a locked suitcase full of "costumes" into Morocco.

When she arrived at the airport of the North African nation, she suddenly panicked that she might unwittingly be a mule, working for a drug syndicate, and handed the suitcase to airport officials.

"I told them, 'It's not mine. I've no idea whose it is,"" she recalls. "And that was the only job I got in Paris."

Soon after, she returned to Los Angeles, where her fortunes changed radically.

With not even an acting lesson to her credit, she tried out for a two-line part in a movie. The director was so taken with her, he cast her in one of the lead roles.

That movie, of course, was stand-out hit The Mask, starring Jim Carrey, and with that one stroke of luck, Cameron went from a nobody who couldn't get a job to one of the most in-demand blonde bombshells Hollywood has ever known.

On August 30, Cameron turns 50 a milestone she's relishing and for good reason.