Former A-list actress Cameron Diaz has issued a public statement claiming she had no relationship with now-deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Ms. Diaz was named within the thousands of pages of court documents released on Jan. 3 that came out of a 2015 defamation lawsuit Virginia Giuffre filed against Ghislaine Maxwell.
Ms. Giuffre filed the defamation lawsuit in response to Ms. Maxwell’s accusation that she was lying about the abuse she underwent.
The case led to the deposition of dozens of people, which took place over two years before it was settled in 2017.
According to The Independent, that first judge ordered the documents related to the case to be sealed. However, The Miami Herald—the media publication that first reported on Mr. Epstein’s alleged trafficking—sued to have the documents unsealed.
Though Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys fought to keep them sealed, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska— appointed by George H. W. Bush—ordered their public release, which included revealing the names previously known as John and Jane Does.
Judge Preska’s argument for releasing the names was that most of the information had already been made public by way of media reports and other lawsuits.
In 2022, Ms. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years for her involvement in child sex trafficking.
In 2008, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was sentenced to a jail work-release program that he completed after a little over a year.
In 2019, Mr. Epstein was facing up to 45 years in prison for sex trafficking when he was found dead in his prison cell of an alleged suicide.
Last week, two chapters of documents were unsealed, continuing the story of Mr. Epstein’s network and who was connected.
In addition to Ms. Diaz, several other high-profile politicians and celebrities were named, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell, Cate Blancett, and now-deceased Michael Jackson.
In the depositions, alleged victim Johanna Sjoberg said Mr. Esptein claimed he knew several Hollywood A-listers, though she said she believed this to be “name-dropping,” and that she had never actually met them, or President Clinton.
Ms. Diaz issued this statement to E! Online in response to her name surfacing in the unsealed documents:
“Cameron never met Jeffrey Epstein, nor was she ever in the same place as him or had any association with him whatsoever, regardless of the fact he may or may not have mentioned her name or implied that he knew her.”
Ms. Diaz retired from acting in 2018, stating in one interview that she sought and found peace in being absent from the limelight.
“I got peace in my soul because I finally was taking care of myself,” she said, later adding that she had to slow down and examine her life.
“When you’re making a movie, they own you,” she said. “You’re there for 12 hours a day for months on end, you have no time for anything else. I really needed to know that I could take care of myself, that I knew how to be an adult.”
After her breakthrough role in the 1994 comedy fantasy “The Mask,” starring Jim Carrey, Ms. Diaz went on to work with several acclaimed directors such as Martin Scorsese, Spike Jonze, and Oliver Stone.
She later married “Good Charlotte” guitarist Benji Madden in 2015 when she was 41 and co-founded an organic wine company called Aveline.
Ms. Diaz returned to acting in 2022 to star with Jamie Fox in the now-in-production Netflix action comedy “Back in Action,” directed by “Horrible Bosses” director Seth Gordon.
