Think A-Rod may have tamed Cameron? Not a chance. The stunning blonde is stronger, sexier, and more daring than ever.

Cameron Diaz has been avoiding the restaurant at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. “We haven’t seen you in a while,” the maître d’ says as he drops her off at our table. Cameron nods wistfully, “I know!” It’s not that she doesn’t like the famously posh place – it’s that she can’t resist their fried-chicken special. There was a time when the 38-year-old came here every Sunday to treat herself to the fattening feast. Not anymore. As the blonde beauty shrugs off her beige blazer to reveal a fitted gray sweater underneath, she tells us she stopped eating fried food this past January. “I’ve always worked out, but I woke up one day and realized that, while I looked fine, eating the way I was didn’t make me feel fine,” she says, opening the menu. “So, you know, I really just stopped eating it.” To prove her point, she orders a low-cal meal of roasted chicken, quinoa, and kale.

Hmm…could this change in diet have been influenced by her romance with Alex Rodriguez, the notoriously health-conscious baseball superstar? Perhaps it gave her the idea, but she shrugs off the notion that she’d ever change just to please a guy. “I really don’t care what other people think,” she says with a shake of her head. “It’s my life; I live it the way I want to.” That’s Cameron’s go-to mantra, and she applies it to everything – from the movies she stars in to the crazy adventure trips she goes on with BFF Drew Barrymore to whether she’ll let her steamy relationship progress to the next step.

Her Most Wicked Role Yet
As good of an actress as Cameron is – and thanks to films like Gangs of New York and Being John Malkovich, her talent is undeniable – there’s nothing more fun than watching her be naughty. In Bad Teacher (out this month!), she plays Elizabeth, a weed-smoking, sex-obsessed teacher who’s trying to save enough money for breast implants. She swears at students, falls asleep on the job, and tries to seduce someone else’s crush. It’s a role plenty of actresses would’ve stayed away from, worrying it crossed too many lines. Cameron isn’t concerned. “C’mon, you don’t think there are teachers out there who get high after school or want a boob job?” she laughs, slapping her knee. “I was drawn to her beacuse she’s real. She lives how she wants to and doesn’t apologize for it. She’s not perfect, and I liked that she isn’t a totally changed woman at the end of the film, because that’s just not realistic.”

Turning a less-than-appealing character into a role that fans will love to watch is part of the fun for Cameron. “I like being challenged,” she says. Which is exactly why she loves to do some of her own stunts. Tom Cruise describes a crazy one that took place on the set of Knight and Day, which he and Cameron starred in together last summer.

“Cameron was known as CD for short, and the stunt coordinators couldn’t stop talking about her. They’d say ‘Wait till you see CD drive this car.’ She was pulling 180s right on the mark. Some of this stuff she was doing could be considered dangerous, and she just blew everyone away.”

Dangerous? “It’s just fun,” says Cameron, as if it were no big deal to have put her multimillion-dollar bod at risk. “Who doesn’t dream of being able to master a car chase?”

Death-Defying BFFs
According to her best friend, Drew Barrymore,

© 2011 Cosmopolitan.