Asked if she's religious, Diaz says she wasn't raised with a religion. ``I was raised with faith . . . spirituality. I have a deep faith, for sure.''

These days, Diaz seems to be comfortable in her skin and not worried about the aging-actress syndrome. ``I think it's a privilege to get older. Not everybody gets that privilege, and I hope to.''

''I'm not 25 anymore,'' she had told a group of reporters earlier in the day. ''I could have a 16-year-old child; I might if I was a different person.'' She adds with her offbeat sense of humor, ``I'm sure I have a few out there that I don't know about.''

That last comment is no doubt in response to the constant questions by the paparazzi about who she's dating. She seems a bit disheartened when it's mentioned that bloggers were jumping on an offhanded comment she made in a Marie Claire magazine article. While much of the lengthy piece was devoted to a four-day trip Diaz took to interview people for a short film for the magazine about the failing health of our planet, Internet headlines were about her butt.

''I'd love a bigger butt, more meat on my bones,'' she told the interviewer. ``I'd love to be more voluptuous. It's just not my body type.''

Some of the postings didn't even mention what the article was about or even the second part of the quote about her body type.

''It just shows that some people are too concerned with the wrong things -- minimizing makes us all smaller,'' says Diaz, who adds that while growing up she could see flames from a refinery from her house and remembers how her dad dusted all the time because of all the dirt that came in.

FOCUS ON FUTURE

After having attended a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in which the leaders in their fields discussed innovation, Diaz began to wonder ''what it would take for people to be engaged in shaping their future.'' So for the film, the actress interviewed a number of people, many of them living in the shadows of refineries like the one near her childhood home.

``What I found when I went to Cleveland and Houston was that there were maybe three people out of the hundred or so I spoke to who actually knew where their food or water or air came from. . . . I think it's interesting that we've given over the three things that keep us alive to total strangers. It's responsible for a lot of things that are happening in our society -- our health, how sick we are as a nation, cancer and diabetes, obesity. All those things that we have control over if we just paid attention a little bit more and asked for something different. We are in a democracy. We can shape and form our future.''

But Diaz is quick to say she doesn't have the answers.

``I just wanted to pose a question for people to ask themselves.''

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