Why Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden's Love Story Is the Sweetest Thing (2024)

Originally appeared on E! Online

Boys might laugh at girls when they're not funny, but Benji Madden has never had to fake it with Cameron Diaz.

"I'm a total goofball," Cameron told Cosmopolitan about her approach to dating in 2000, "and I think guys see how much of an idiot I can make of myself so they aren't worried about embarrassing themselves."

Naturally, there was something about the Charlie's Angels star besides her presumably adorable idiocy that attracted the Good Charlotte rocker when he was invited to a dinner party Cameron hosted in 2014 with Benji's sister-in-law Nicole Richie and her husband, Joel Madden.

And the feeling was mutual, because the couple hightailed it to the altar less than a year after that fateful gathering, tying the knot at home on Jan. 5, 2015. They now share daughter Raddix, 4, and son Cardinal, whose arrival they announced in March.

When it came to meeting The One, "it was one of those things where everyone tells you, 'You just know when you know,'" Cameron, who's celebrating her 52nd birthday Aug. 30, recalled on Andy Cohen's Radio Andy in 2016. "I was like, 'What does that mean?'" But once she and the musician she affectionately referred to as "Benj" were finally in the same room together, she got it.

"You just know when you know," she reiterated. "Like, you're my husband."

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Cameron and Benji have been singing each other's praises ever since—though in a relatively low key since their romance really took off.

Why Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden's Love Story Is the Sweetest Thing (1)

Having logged time as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and after spending 20 years navigating the highs and lows of global fame, Cameron had already to take a giant leap back from her movie star life following the release of Annie in 2014. And since she didn't have a committed relationship with social media when she exited stage right and hooked up with her eventual husband...

Et voilà, a disappearing act in plain sight, trading in the glare of the spotlight for the cozy warm glow of Benji's love.

"He's really taught me to value myself a lot more," Cameron reflected on Michelle Visage's Rule Breakers podcast in 2022. She didn't necessarily expect to get that from marriage, she explained, because she was used to "receiving so much validation elsewhere and in all these other ways."

But Benji and Raddix, at the time their only child, were all that mattered. "We know that, no matter what, we can just go and be just a family anywhere and we're fine," Cameron said. "We don't need any of the things that we have—other than each other."

Though now they might need a record player, Benji sharing in the rarest of comments about his family world that there was always music on at home.

"The song in our house right now is 'Rock and a Hard Place,' [by] Bailey Zimmerman," the 45-year-old said on TODAY in October. "My daughter always says, 'Play "dam is broken."'" He laughed at the reference to the lyric that actually goes, "It ain't broke yet, but damn, it needs fixin'," adding, "We're listening to records nonstop."

"I don't come from this era of sharing my life," Cameron, whose Instagram is largely devoted to cooking and her Avaline wine business, said on the Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino podcast in November 2020. "That's always been something I've been very protective of, because I come from the era of tabloid invasion into my privacy and people stalking me and following me. So my instinct has always been to protect myself from not having the world know what I'm doing or where I'm going at any given point just so that I could exist."

Benji does do birthdays, however, such as when he called himself "the LUCKIEST guy ALIVE" on his wife's 45th in 2017, or last Aug. 30, when he shouted out his "beautiful wife, best friend, best partner in everything, ride or die," etc., for her 51st.

And while Cameron is recently unretired, having shot the upcoming Netflix movie Back in Action with Jamie Foxx, which is due out Nov. 15, she could have never acted again and still there would have been mass interest in her romantic endgame—not least thanks to her quietly epic dating history.

Raddix has also been treated to at least an album's worth of original kids' music, according to Cameron, who in addition to admiring Benji's hotness from way back, also calls him the "best dad ever."

"He has, like, the best songs," she informed Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show in October. "They play in my head all the time because he sings them to her, and she knows the words, and it's the sweetest thing ever."

But while these sorts of behind-the-scenes details do get shared on occasion, Cameron and Benji are on the same page about mainly keeping their family life to themselves. Raddix's birth toward the end of 2019 marked a rare occasion where they used social media to break personal news, and they followed suit in announcing Cardinal's birth in March.

"He is awesome and We are all so happy he is here!" read a March 22 post to their respective Instagram accounts. "For the kids safety and privacy we won’t be posting any pictures- but he’s a really cute...We are feeling so blessed and grateful...Sending much love from our fam to yours."

Why Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden's Love Story Is the Sweetest Thing (2)

"I don't come from this era of sharing my life," Cameron, whose Instagram is largely devoted to work-related fun, cooking and her Avaline wine business, said on the Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino podcast in November 2020. "That's always been something I've been very protective of, because I come from the era of tabloid invasion into my privacy and people stalking me and following me. So my instinct has always been to protect myself from not having the world know what I'm doing or where I'm going at any given point just so that I could exist."

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"I'm grateful for all of it—whether it was something quick and passing or something that lingered too long," Cameron told InStyle about two months before she and Benji were first photographed hand-in-hand, confirming dating rumors without saying a word. "There is not one thing I've been through that hasn't been a lesson that led me to this moment, and I can't believe how great life keeps getting."

Her endorsem*nt of separate bedrooms (plus one in the middle for their "relations") aside, you can more often find her waxing rhapsodic about domestic life.

"I love being married," Cameron gushed on the YouTube series Makeup & Friends in 2020. "The best thing that's ever happened to me is finding my husband, and our partnership, and our friendship." Moreover, she added, "I love being a mother. It's the best, best, best part of my life. I'm so grateful and so happy and it's the best thing ever and I'm so lucky to do it with Benj and we're having the best time. I'm thrilled. I can't believe it."

If you need to see it to believe it, check out Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden's love story in photos: