Cameron Diaz has praised her husband Benji Madden for encouraging her back to work.

The 52-year-old actress - who stepped away from the spotlight following the release of her 2014 movie 'Annie' - is making her big screen comeback in 'Back In Action', but she acknowledged she really had to "push" herself to do so as she'd have been content staying at home with the Good Charlotte rocker and their children Raddix, five, and six-month-old Cardinal.

Speaking at Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit, she said of her comeback: “It was just the right time for my family. After Covid, we were in the house for a long time, which was amazing and the problem was we would probably stay there, we would still be there right now.

"People would be like, ‘It’s over’ and I’d be like, ‘No it’s not, it’s not over for me.'

“So I had to push myself; my husband and I — my husband, who is the best — he was like, ‘You’ve been supporting us and building the family’ and supporting him in his businesses, he’s like, ‘It’s time for us to support you and let Mommy ascend and do her thing.’

"He’s like, ‘Let me see you do it girl.’ I was like, ‘Alright, here we go.' "

Cameron insisted stopping acting was the "right thing" for her to do at the time in order to "reclaim" her life.

She said: “It was something I just had to do. It felt like the right thing for me to do to reclaim my own life and I just really didn’t care about anything else.

"Nobody’s opinion, nobody’s success, no one’s offer, no one’s anything could change my mind about my decision of taking care of myself and building the life that I really wanted to have.

“It really comes to what are you passionate about? For me it was to build my family.”

And when it came to Netflix's 'Back in Action', the 'Mask' star couldn't turn down the chance to work with her 'Annie' and 'Any Given Sunday' co-star Jamie Foxx again.

She said: "I couldn’t say no to Jamie. He said, ‘Come with me’ and I said, ‘OK let’s do it;’ it’s our third film together so it’s really great.”