Here’s a new, very interesting, interview with Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin, courtesy of USA Today. They talk about My Sister’s Keeper, Cameron playing a mother and more. Read it below. Enjoy!

Cameron Diaz is having a mommy moment.

The notoriously private actress finds herself the first to arrive for a joint interview to promote her new film, My Sister’s Keeper. And co-star Sofia Vassilieva is nowhere to be found.

After 20 minutes, Diaz stops the interview to call Vassilieva.

“Honey, I’m just checking on you,” Diaz says, straining for patience. “I was worried about you. Are you almost here?”

She has no immediate plans on being a mother, but Diaz is getting the knack of playing one.

Keeper, which opens Friday, marks something of a career shift for Diaz, 36. The Nick Cassavetes film is the first in which she plays a mother. And she follows Keeper with The Box, in which she plays another mom, due Oct. 30.

Though Diaz says she was not looking for maternal roles, she is aware of her new career stage.

“I’m not 25 years old,” Diaz says. “Obviously I wasn’t going to play the 14-year-old daughter. As you get older, you play different roles. I enjoy doing that.”

But don’t take the career change as a lifestyle shift. Diaz, whose relationships have included Justin Timberlake and Matt Dillon, says she’s comfortable as a bachelorette, though she has been increasingly peppered with questions about whether she plans to start a family.

“I understand the reason people ask, and with this film the question happens to be relevant,” she says. “But people are obsessed with it. … They were asking me with What Happens in Vegas whether I wanted to be a mother.”

She didn’t answer then, and she isn’t answering now. She is, however, a staunch defender of the child-free life.

“I’m not the only 36-year-old woman who doesn’t have children,” she says. “In all aspects of my life, most of my friends don’t have kids. It’s not uncommon.”

And Diaz hardly needs parenthood to prepare her for the grown-up world. While making Keeper, Diaz lost her father, Emilio, 58, to pneumonia.

Cassavetes, who stopped production for nearly two weeks, was moved by Diaz’s determination when she returned.

“I had known her for years, so I knew she was strong,” Cassavetes says. “But I was amazed by her resolve. That’s one of the reasons she was perfect for this role.”

Diaz says that her father’s death “was the most profound thing that’s ever happened to me. It was pretty intense. Whether it helped me or hurt (the performance), I have no idea. I can’t say I was really there. I wasn’t there. But I was fortunate to go back to a wonderful group of people who were very supportive and be able to finish the work I had to finish.”

The film, based on the Jodi Picoult novel, tells the story of a family coping with the cancer of the older daughter (Vassilieva). Diaz plays a loving but unyielding mother who has another daughter (Abigail Breslin), whom she pressures into donating bone marrow to the dying teen.

Despite the heavy material, Breslin says, the women had a bond that kept things light on set — led by Diaz.

“She kept things fun,” Breslin says. “She was always cooking us fajitas or Philly cheese steaks. There was a lot of kindness on set. It was very nurturing.”

Diaz even played driving instructor to Vassilieva, who got her license during filming.

“I’d make her let me drive her from her trailer,” Vassilieva says. “We all got close in a way I didn’t expect. … We got to know cancer patients. We cried together. The material was so personal to us, we kind of created a family.”

Diaz hopes that will happen often as she takes unfamiliar roles: “For me, this feels right in rhythm with the way I’ve been making films for the past 15 years. I just want to tell great stories as I go.”