Cameron Diaz Book: Actress Reveals She Was Scared, Debilitated Before First Publication Release

Cameron Diaz decided to spread her wings and try her luck as an author. The actress, who is known for her hilarious roles in many feature films has revealed that although she was excited about releasing her first book, her confidence levels were not as high as they should have been.

According to People, the actress had some deep rooted insecurities when it came towards her writing. The star who is known for being uber confident and having a great sense of humor met her match when it came to tackling a new endeavor in her career.

“Right before the book came out, I was on my back for a week. My back went out. I couldn’t breathe,” she told the audience at sister in-law Nicole Richie‘s Pearl xChange at The London in West Hollywood, California.

“I’ve never had that kind of thing where I was just literally debilitated. I realized I was just so scared that I was going to put this thing into the world and everybody’s going to see me, and what if they don’t like me? What if they think I’m crazy or I’m stupid? I was like, oh God, this is so painful,” she shared.

While no one was aware of her insecurities, the now 44-year-old actress decided that sharing those issues with her audience would have been the perfect way to inspire someone along the way.

“It was revealing about who I was. Movies are like totally fake. It’s not me at all. It is, but they’re characters. This book was all me. There was no hiding. I was so open and so raw,” she explained.

Although Diaz has struggled with her confidence as an author, her book about her life has made it was in the publishing industry. Making history as a New York Times bestseller, the achievement gave her the much needed confidence to write her second book, "The Longevity Book: the Science of Aging, the Biology of Strength, and the Privilege of Time," released in June 2016.

While this feat shows a huge success for the actress, she does not feel that the book defines true success for her. Releasing the book was more than that, something bigger than herself.

“Success is really not about what somebody else says. Being a New York Times bestseller, to me, that’s not the success of the book. The book isn’t the numbers that got sold. It was that I had an intention, and the intention was to get that information out to as many women as I could.”