At 41, Cameron Diaz is pretty happy with her life.

She’s dating rock star Benji Madden, her career is on fire and—this might surprise you—she is AOK with the fact that she doesn’t have kids.

“It’s so much more work to have children,” she tells Esquire. “To have lives besides your own that you are responsible for—I didn’t take that on. That did make things easier for me. A baby—that’s all day, every day for 18 years.”

The decision wasn’t exactly easy, she explains, because she likes protecting people, “but I was never drawn to being a mother,” she said. “I have it much easier than any of them. That’s just what it is. Doesn’t mean life isn’t sometimes hard. I’m just what I am. I work on what I am.”

She also released a New York Times bestseller called The Body Book, which takes a holistic approach to nutrition, exercise, caring for your body and accepting it.

She shows off the results of looking after her own amazing body in her new film, Sex Tape, in which she strips off for the first time on film.

Calling 41 “the best age,” Ms Diaz is finding life pretty terrific at the moment. “Right now, I think, things are good for me. I’ve done a lot. And I don’t care anymore.”

Where once she might have worried more about things, “I like being 41. I love it. So much sh*t just falls away. Fear, mostly. It’s the best age. That’s when a woman knows how to work things, or she doesn’t care about that anymore. You just stop being afraid. You don’t worry about what men think. You just don’t worry that time registers anything awful.”

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