Cameron Diaz makes rare public appearance for Charlie’s Angels reunion with Lucy Liu, Drew Barrymore

Six years after she quit acting, Cameron Diaz has a message for her Charlie’s Angels co-stars: “The Hollywood fairytale doesn’t exist.”

Drew Barrymore opened her brand new talk show with a bang this week, enlisting Charlie’s Angels co-stars Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz for a Charlie’s Angels reunion.

It was a treat for fans of the trio, some 17 years after they appeared together in the Charlie’s Angels sequel – but all eyes were on Diaz, who famously quit Hollywood in 2014 and has made few public appearances since.

Barrymore said her co-stars had been “part of my heart for 20 years,” describing them as “my partners in crime and in life”.

Drew Barrymore’s got a new talk show.

Cameron Diaz makes an appearance.

The emotional reunion was the first time Diaz, 48, Liu, 51 and Barrymore, 45, had been together in “a very long time,” Diaz revealed, reflecting on the two decades since the trio made the first film and her subsequent retreat from the spotlight.

“No aspect of life is a Hollywood fairytale. That’s why it’s a Hollywood fairytale, because it doesn’t exist. Life is full of twists and turns,” she said.

“Twenty years is a long time, y’all. I’m two years away from 50 – that’s nearly half my life. We have Charlie’s Angels as the backdrop that brought us together,” she said.

RELATED: Inside Cameron Diaz’s secret life as a Hollywood ‘retiree’

Diaz quit Hollywood in 2014.

Lucy Liu, still flawless.

In a bizarre twist, towards the end of the interview, Barrymore revealed that Diaz wasn’t actually in the room with her socially distanced co-stars but was across the country in Los Angeles and had been greenscreened in to join the conversation:

Cameron Diaz disappears into thin air.

Elsewhere in the conversation, the trio opened up about how they’ve changed since Charlie’s Angels, which is streaming on Binge. Liu said that in her 20s she felt “bulletproof – I didn’t really care whether I lived or died”.

Diaz, who had a baby daughter with husband Benji Madden last year, spoke about becoming a mother.

“I think there’s something in our DNA that gets triggered when you become a parent. You have to make sure that they will survive. They go on, and we will die. I’m sorry to get morbid.”

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Twenty years ago – the trio in Charlie’s Angels.

Since marrying the Good Charlotte rocker in 2015, Diaz has largely disappeared from the spotlight, with her last acting role being 2014’s poorly received Annie remake.

In an interview with InStyle earlier this year, Diaz explained why stepping away from the spotlight was the right decision.

“I started (experiencing fame) when I was 22, so 25 years ago, that’s a long time,” Diaz said. “I’ve given more than half of my life to the public. I feel it’s OK for me to take time for myself now to reorganise and choose how I want to come (back) into the world. I don’t miss performing.”

In a recent interview with another A-lister who all but abandoned her acting career, Gwyneth Paltrow, Diaz was asked what she felt walking away “from a movie career of that magnitude”.

“Peace. I got a peace in my soul because I was finally taking care of myself,” Diaz said. “Even as you’re saying it, I’m like, I feel grounded, and light.”

“It‘s a strange thing to say, I know a lot of people won’t understand it, I know you understand it, but it was so intense to work at that level and be that public and put yourself out there,” Diaz said.

“I handed off parts of my life to other people – and they took it. And I had to basically take it back.”