Cameron Diaz Recalls a Time She Couldn't Breathe!

Cameron Diaz holds on to her to-go coffee after finishing up lunch at the Montage Hotel on Friday (November 18) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The 44-year-old actress appeared to be in a great mood as she headed to her car with sister-in-law Nicole Richie (not pictured).

Cameron recently opened up about a time she had a hard time breathing – right before the release of her first book, The Body Book: Feed, Move, Understand and Love Your Amazing Body, back in 2013!

“Right before the book came out, I was on my back for a week,” she told the audience at Nicole‘s Pearl xChange event in West Hollywood. “My back went out. I couldn’t breathe.”

“I’ve never had that kind of thing where I was just literally debilitated,” Cameron went on. “I realized I was just so scared that I was going to put this thing into the world and everybody’s going to see me, and what if they don’t like me? What if they think I’m crazy or I’m stupid? I was like, ‘Oh God, this is so painful.’”

“It was revealing about who I was,” she added. “Movies are like totally fake. It’s not me at all. It is, but they’re characters. This book was all me. There was no hiding. I was so open and so raw.”

Turns out, releasing her book was a good decision – it became a New York Times bestseller!