Jessica Alba opened up about her Hollywood career and the pressure of being presented as a sex symbol at the start of it.
The 43-year-old actress is making a return to acting with Trigger Warning, her first movie since 2019′s Killers Anonymous.
During an appearance on What Now? with Trevor Noah, Jessica reflected on where she feels the most at home in the industry. She also spoke about how the way she was presented caused her to second-guess herself.
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On the topic of being a sex symbol, Jessica said that the pressure felt inescapable.
“I think that no matter what role whether I was doing like a dance movie you know to inspire young girls like Honey, or if I was Dark Angel where I was a genetically engineered like super human, or if I was Sue Storm, who was a very like maternal kind of superhero, they would always feel like they needed to sell me to the fanboys in a certain way,” she said, adding that it was something all actresses faced at the time.
She continued, saying, “And so yes, there were like two or three of these men’s magazines that we would all do to, you know, try and get those fanboys to go and show up and watch. Whatever it is that we were selling.”
To balance that out, Jessica said that she’d “always try to do three to four women’s magazines. So for every one guy’s, I would do three to four women’s.”
The actress added that the perception about her changed the way people viewed her. Even she had trouble understanding all that she was capable of.
“I think it’s difficult for people once they have I think an idea of who you are in their mind and they’ve put you in Maxim and you’re in Esquire and GQ and you know, they have you in those things, it’s tough for them to imagine that you could be intelligent, that you could have a soul, that you could have depth of emotions, or be dynamic in any way. And I think I also had to wrestle with those stereotypes, even on myself,” she admitted. “It took me probably three years after I founded Honest until I really started to embrace the notion that I could be smart.”
On the topic of Hollywood, Jessica explained that she truly feels at home on a set but is less comfortable with the glamour of formal events.
“It feels like I’m with my people,” she said about sets. “I don’t know, I feel like that’s probably where I feel most comfortable.”
She continued, explaining, “I would say I never felt comfortable in Hollywood settings, like more traditional Hollywood where we’ve met, you know, the Vanity Fair party or the Golden Globes or that. That’s where I always felt wildly uncomfortable, but I’ve always felt really comfortable on a set.”
If you missed it, Jessica recently walked the red carpet with her two daughters Honor and Haven.
Trigger Warning arrives on Netflix on June 21 – check out the trailer!
