THE PRINCESS FIONA DIARIES CAMERON DIAZ REVEALS HER INNER OGRE AND FINDS MUCH TO LOVE ABOUT HER 'SHREK 2' CHARACTER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Could an animated ogress be Cameron Diaz's most personal performance?

Sounds silly on the surface of it. After all, Princess Fiona in ``Shrek'' and the computer-generated fairy tale's new sequel ``Shrek 2'' was voiced in, maybe, a couple of weeks total, several hours at a time over a span of many years. Hardly ripe conditions for one of the most successful ($20 million payday for last year's ``Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle,'' a reported $10 million for the ``Shrek'' follow-up) and adventurous (``There's Something About Mary,'' ``Being John Malkovich,'' ``Very Bad Things'') actresses in Hollywood to create a revelatory characterization.

But for reasons that quickly become evident, the green-skinned newlywed expresses attitudes the effusive 31-year-old golden girl feels deeply passionate about.

``Because I'm not doing it every day and it is only a couple of hours here and there, you don't feel like you're totally, 100 percent involved with it,'' Diaz admits. ``But at the same time, that character is so my character. I feel very possessive of Fiona. It's interesting to see something that's not actually tangible so fully embody your essence. It feels like I've lent something to this film that I could never give to any other film, in a weird way.''

Not easy being green

``One of the things that was so good about Cameron in the first one, and why we chose her for this character, is that Fiona had the pretenses of being this glamorous princess but really was this down-to-earth person who just wanted to be herself,'' observes Andrew Adamson, who did directing duty on both ``Shreks.'' ``I think that's what Cameron is. She's a movie star, model, all those kind of things. But when you get to know her, she's really just this down-to-earth person.''

That becomes more evident than ever in the sequel. In the first film, Fiona started out as a beautiful princess who fell in unlikely love with the ogre Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers), which in turn made her true inner self, also a conventionally unattractive monster, manifest physically.

No matter; Fiona and Shrek happily wed. But in the sequel, they must travel to Fiona's home kingdom of Far Far Away, a sort of medieval Beverly Hills, to meet her royal human parents, voiced by John Cleese and Julie Andrews. The folks and their subjects are neither pleased with Fiona's new appearance nor her choice in husbands. The king conspires with a social climbing fairy godmother (Jennifer Saunders) to wreck the marriage and pair off Fiona with Prince Charming (Rupert Everett).

The 'Shrek' philosophy

Although the ``Shreks'' are primarily pun-filled satires of classic bedtime stories and modern pop culture, Diaz says that she is primarily attracted to them for the very traditional morals they impart.

``In the first film, Princess Fiona realized that her Prince Charming didn't come in the package that she was always told that he would,'' the actress explains. ``And she didn't accept herself as who she was, but as soon as she got out of that tower and stopped listening to all that, she became the person that she truly is.

``Then, in this film, she has a lot of pressure from all the people who told her about Prince Charming to take everything materialistically and monetarily. And she literally is just kind of baffled by it and says, 'Sorry, but I don't need any of those things.' All she needs is this man who she loves and loves her and accepts her. And that is a wonderful message!''

Especially to someone who, as Diaz tells it anyway, has had it up to here with all of the glitzed-out glamour of being a wealthy, pop-star-dating Hollywood celebrity.

``That is something that is projected onto our community, really,'' she says with evident distaste. ``Some people really champion it, really revel in it and love that aspect of our society's projection. They like being what they think a movie star is meant to be. But there is a large group of us who don't. I mean, I watch these shows and read these magazines that say this is what I buy, this is what I wear, this is where I go, this is who I'm friends with, these are the cars I drive, these are the products I use.

``Those are all lies,'' says the woman who it's been rumored washes her face with Evian water. ``There's no way that I use that much product! There is no way that I own that much. It's impossible. All that's about is people making money off of my name. I'm a public figure, but forget the money. What it says to society is to be like this person, to look like or be happy like this person, you have to have all of these things because that's what she does. That's not true. And it's not true that if I owned all of those things, that would make me happy or make me feel like who I am.''

Money can't buy me love

Diaz confesses that there was a time - when the former teenage model was working back-to-back on a string of hits that included ``My Best Friend's Wedding,'' ``Any Given Sunday,'' ``Vanilla Sky'' and ``Gangs of New York,'' as well as the first ``Charlie's Angels'' and ``Shrek'' - when she bought stuff like crazy to fill a gnawing inner emptiness.

``For a second, you're excited about it, and afterward you're like, 'What am I doing with all this s---?' '' she laughs. What actually did the trick was cutting down on the workload and surrounding herself with people she loves and enjoys.

The only project on the horizon right now is ``In Her Shoes,'' a searing character-based drama directed by ``L.A. Confidential's'' well-regarded Curtis Hanson. A remake of the middling 1970s comedy ``Fun With Dick and Jane,'' for which Diaz was reportedly offered a record-setting $30 million, is apparently in limbo.

``I'm not saying that's what everybody has to do,'' Diaz acknowledges. ``I'm lucky in my position in my business that I can take time off. But that's the way that I've been able to ground myself.''

One of those people who help her cope with the media glare is, ironically, tabloid magnet Justin Timberlake. Diaz has been dating the 23-year-old singer/wardrobe-malfunction-facilitator for more than a year. And although she declines to discuss her romantic relationships (previous boyfriends have included actors Matt Dillon and Jared Leto), she does think it's pretty darn funny that, in ``Shrek 2,'' Princess Fiona has a pinup of pretty ``Sir Justin'' in her old castle bedroom.

``I didn't know anything about it,'' Diaz insists, laughing. ``It takes a couple of years to make these movies, and I think they they could do that before I even knew him. I think it would have been hilarious, no matter what.''

In fact, it's a gas

More hilarity comes from Fiona's new ogreish appreciation of burping and other indelicate bodily functions. It's a pleasure shared by the actress, whom Adamson gleefully reports supplied her own windy noises.

``Yeah,'' Diaz confirms. ``I'm very gaseous, there is absolutely no secret about that. I buy fully into the saying of, 'It's better out than in.' It's always been that way.''

``She's not like a Hollywood star, Cameron,'' English actor Everett, who also worked with her in ``My Best Friend's Wedding,'' notes. ``She's pretty realistic and not too caught up in the terror of our world, which can really turn your head, especially if you're a woman. It's a man's world, and to keep going in it you can quite often calcify, or you get kind of harder, I think. But that didn't happen to Cameron.''

She's gone her own way from the start. The Long Beach-raised Diaz took off for Japan - on her own - to begin her modeling career at the tender age of 16. With no acting experience at all, she landed the female lead opposite Jim Carrey in 1994's ``The Mask.'' Forget passing gas, that's nothing compared to ``Something About Mary's'' infamous ``hair gel'' gag, a gross-out classic that (pardon the expression) solidified Diaz's star status while marking her as a deft comic actress who was willing to try just about anything.

But she doesn't want us to read too much into that.

``I don't think of it in terms of risk or achievement,'' she says of her career choices. ``The success for me is doing the film. If I can make a director happy with what I do, that is the ultimate for me. I could never make a decision based on, 'What does this mean to my career?' I don't worry about what a film is gonna end up like. I don't worry how much they're going to pay me for it. I have not done movies because they wanted to pay me too much and it did not make sense to me for that kind of film.''

Diaz credits her parents with instilling a sense of independent self- confidence.

``I have the best parents in the world,'' she says of dad Emilio and mom Billie. ``They've always been so supportive, and I would have been a different person than I am if I didn't have that support and went off at 16 to a foreign country and lived on my own.''

No doubt. But Diaz does admit that there are days when her inner ogre - not the contented Fiona kind - gets the better of her.

``Constantly! I'm only human. Everybody has their good and bad days. There are some days when I don't wanna leave the house. And an ogre exists in everyone. Being human is being an ogre. We're all imperfect.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- 2 -- cover -- color) Cameron Diaz unleashes THE OGRE WITHIN

(3) ``I feel very possessive of Fiona. It's interesting to see something that's not actually tangible so fully embody your essence. It feels like I've lent something to this film that I could never give to any other film, in a weird way,'' says Cameron Diaz on making the `Shrek' films.