Did you know Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden have been married for four years?
As one of Hollywood’s most famous stars, it’s weird to think that we don’t know all that much about Diaz’s marriage with the 39-year-old Good Charlotte guitarist.
The couple married in an intimate ceremony on Jan. 5 2015, and first began dating in May 2014.
Following high-profile romances with Justin Timberlake, Jared Leto and Alex Rodriguez that dominated headlines for years, Diaz’s relationship with Madden, the twin brother of Joel Madden, pal Nicole Richie‘s husband, has been surprisingly low-key…which is exactly how she wants it.
In fact, the couple never even publicly confirmed they were engaged, with Diaz slightly opening up to Cosmopolitan in 2015 about her romance with the rocker.
“You have to find someone in the same place as you are. Timing is everything,” the Charlie’s Angels star, who knew Madden for years before they began dating, said. “If you get into a relationship where you want something the guy doesn’t want, it’s never gonna work. You’re never going to get him to be in that place. No matter how old you are, finding the guy who’s in the same place as you are and wants to show up is the only way a relationship works, period.”
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And Diaz shared her perspective on her previous relationships, choosing to look at them as lessons rather than mistakes.
“Here’s the thing: You make the same mistake over and over again until you learn your lesson,” the 42-year-old Other Woman actress says. “We girls sometimes do the thing where we pick the same person over and over again—they look and seem different, but deep down, they’re the same. And that’s on us.”
Still, in an interview with Marie Claire in 2014, Diaz said marriage wasn’t the be-all, end-all for her.
“I’m not looking for a husband or marriage or not not looking for that stuff,” she said. “I’m living, not thinking what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my life.”
So what was it about Madden, whom she met through Richie, that made him the one for Diaz?
Well, for starters, it seems like it wasn’t really about Madden at all: it was about Diaz finding herself after two decades of non-stop work in the entertainment industry, traveling all around the world from one job to the next.
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“I just went, ‘I can’t really say who I am to myself.’ Which is a hard thing to face up to,” she said at the Goop Wellness Summit in 2017. “I felt the need to make myself whole.”
In doing that, Diaz retired from acting, with 2014’s Annie remake being her last onscreen role.
On the panel, her good friend and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, who recently married Brad Falchuk, asked Diaz about why she never wed until she was 41.
“I think it’s a matter of I just hadn’t met my husband, you know? I had boyfriends before. And there’s a really, really distinct difference between husbands and boyfriends,” she explained. “And I have a husband who is just my partner in life and in everything. Talk about two very different people! We are so different from one another, but we share the same values—we’re totally two peas in a pod. We are both just weird enough for each other.”
She continued, “We women are objectified so much. Somehow my husband has just been able to kind of show me what it’s like not to have that be a part of a relationship, and being an equal.”
Diaz also found an immediate family after she married Madden, as Richie, also participating on the Goop panel, shared that the Maddens are “a very close family. They rely on each other. When we got together it was like, you’re just in the family. It’s a large support system.”
Diaz then went on to say she’s never felt loved by anyone in her previous relationships in the same way Madden has supported her.
“I never experienced that before. I’d never been loved in that way,” she admitted. “I look at him every day and he inspires me—he works so hard. I feel so lucky.”
Madden seems to feel just as lucky to have found Diaz after his own string of high-profile relationships, including romances with Paris Hilton, Katy Perry, Holly Madison and Australian star Sophie Monk, who he was once engaged to.
Though he doesn’t post often about his wife on social media, the dedicated a sweet Instagram post to her on her 46th birthday in August.
“There’s so much to write, so many things that make me so proud of you and how special you are,” he wrote. “Thank you for being the best friend and partner to me and taking this journey of Marriage.”
He added, “The way you live your life everyday, and your compassion for the world shines thru in your eyes and you inspire me to want to be the best man I can be in this lifetime. You’re the realest. I’m so grateful to be yours Always&Forever, and to call you my One&Only. True Love.”
The previous year, for her 45th birthday, he called himself “the LUCKIEST guy ALIVE” in an Instagram caption, writing, “I don’t think anyone could ever know the Depth, Kindness, and Compassion that I get to experience everyday thanks to My One and Only.”
In 2016, the notoriously private Diaz opened up about knowing Madden was the one for her the moment they met.
“It was one of those things where everyone tells you, ‘You just know when you know.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ Oh, I get it. You just know when you know. Like you’re my husband,” Cameron explained to Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show.
She also revealed her first impression of Madden: “The first thing I said when I first met my husband was, ‘He’s hot.’ How come I didn’t know this before? We had never been in the same circle.”
But, like she said, you just know when you know.
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Diaz and Madden officially became man and wife in front of 100 guests at her Beverly Hills home in 2015, with her now sister-in-law Richie and BFF Drew Barrymore serving as bridesmaids. “We got married in our living room in front of our friends,” she revealed on Radio Andy, “had a little party in our backyard on the tennis court and yeah. Otherwise it would have been something else.”
And it seems it’s been wedded bliss for the couple ever since.
“That’s how I know he’s my husband… No one compares. Everything else just like washes and slips away,” she told Cohen. “You realize like, ‘Oh this is like the real thing is. This is what real love is. This is what real commitment and devotion is. This is the person you build your life with.”
In 2015, Madden made his love for Diaz permanent, tattooing her name on his chest.
“Thinking bout you❤❤❤ #LuckyMan,” he captioned his tattoo’s debut in an Instagram post.
Since leaving acting behind in 2014 after becoming one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses, it’s been a low-key life for Diaz, who isn’t often seen in public aside from the occasional grocery run or appearance on Paltrow or Barrymore’s Instagram feeds.
She’s turned her focus to wellness, writing two books with Sandra Bark about health and aging, including 2016’s The Longevity Book: The Science of Aging, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time. She’s enjoyed romantic vacations with her husband and friends, including a romantic trip this summer to Italy.
An eyewitness who saw them in Florence told E! News that Diaz and Madden looked “very much in love,” adding, “They walked around with their arms around each other always laughing and talking sweetly to one another. They are crazy about each other and it shows.”
And at the Goop Summit, Diaz said she and her husband “are totally two peas in a pod. We’re both just weird enough for each other. He’s my perfect little weirdo and I’m his perfect little weirdo.”
Here’s to many more years of these two perfect little weirdos living happily ever after.
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