Did Anna Faris really make fun of Cameron Diaz in ‘Lost in Translation’?

Anna Faris has addressed the longstanding rumour that she based her character in Lost in Translation on Cameron Diaz, and made clear she was never happy with the speculation in the first place.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast on Thursday, 4 June, Faris, 49, pushed back on the idea that her portrayal of a bubbly, self-absorbed actress in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film was a deliberate dig at the Charlie’s Angels star. 

“I was always a little annoyed with that accusation,” she said. 

“I felt like it took a little something away from my flavour, and because I had auditioned for it and earned it as that performance, I always felt like, ‘No, I’m not part of some grand weird sabotage.'”

Faris explained that her inspiration came from a very different source entirely. 

Having recently moved to Los Angeles from Seattle, she had encountered a type of person she had never come across before, someone she describes as a “self-describer.” 

“A person who’s like, ‘I am this and I am spiritual and I’m really creative and my aura is this,'” she said. 

That was the energy she tapped into when she auditioned for the role, with Diaz not entering her thinking at any point.

The rumours apparently reached Diaz and affected her. 

Faris said she had read that Diaz’s feelings were hurt, and had wanted to reach out but struggled to find the right way to do it. The closest she came to clearing the air was when Diaz appeared on her own podcast, Anna Faris Is Unqualified, in 2021. 

“Maybe should we clear the air on this podcast?” she joked on Thursday.

“I only had 25 minutes with her. I didn’t know if I should launch immediately until like, ‘I’m really sorry. I wasn’t doing that.’ Anyway, I don’t know if I handled it well.”

She also noted that she never felt able to ask director Sofia Coppola to publicly set the record straight. 

What she could do, though, was offer Diaz a genuine compliment, and she did. 

“She does something that I call the ‘Cameron Diaz Effect,’ which is a scene in Charlie’s Angels when she is dancing to Baby Got Back, man, she’s having so much fun. The audience’s having so much fun. You’re loving it,” Faris said. 

“I was able to give her that compliment.”

It is, by Faris’s own admission, an imperfect resolution to a two-decade-old misunderstanding, but a sincere one.