Jessica Alba Did Not See Herself As A Woman Until Recently
Jessica Alba says she projected a masculine self-image to protect herself from predators in show business and only began embracing femininity upon becoming a mother.
Jessica Alba has been in Hollywood since the early 1990s, and she has gone through a lot to get where she is today. The Fantastic Four actor recently spoke to IndieWire about her tactics to protect herself as a young female actress in Hollywood saying “I felt like I was very much having to put up this armor of masculinity and masculine energy so I wouldn’t, you know, be preyed on because there were a lot of predators in Hollywood from age 12 to 26.” Alba also revealed that this energy meant that she didn’t really feel like she could embrace her femininity until later in life, saying “It wasn’t until I became a mom that I really started to even see myself as a woman or a sexual being or someone who owned her power and her femininity.”
In recent years, many prominent Hollywood figures have been publicly accused of predatory behavior amongst other allegations. It makes sense that Jessica Alba may not have felt safe as a younger star around these types of people. As Alba mentioned in her interview, keeping this unwanted sexual attention at bay was likely an unfortunate necessity for her after she was highly sexualized in some of her early breakout roles.
Jessica Alba started her Hollywood career at age 13 in the film Camp Nowhere, which was closely followed by her appearances in the TV series The Secret World of Alex Mack. Alba’s career began to explode after her appearance in the early 2000s James Cameron series Dark Angel at the age of 19. This would lead to her breakout film roles in Honey, Sin City, and Fantastic Four.
Following Jessica Alba’s rise to superstardom, she would go on to star in a Fantastic Four sequel, numerous romcoms, and more collaborations with director Robert Rodriguez in Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, Machete, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and more. Most recently, Alba co-starred with Gabrielle Union in the Spectrum original series L.A.’s Finest, which ran for two seasons. Nowadays, Alba is mostly focused on her role as the chief creative owner of The Honest Company and her charity work.
As for upcoming film and TV projects, Jessica Alba has a couple of exciting things in the works. Alba will be hosting a docuseries called Parents Without Border for Disney+ that follows Alba as she travels around the world to learn about the parenting beliefs and practices of other cultures. Alba will also be executive producing the docuseries.
Jessica Alba is also starring in the Netflix film Trigger Warning, which is currently in post-production without an official release date listed. Trigger Warning follows a traumatized veteran who learns the truth of her grandfather’s death after inheriting his bar. The film is directed by Mouly Surya and stars Alba along with Anthony Michael Hall, Gabriel Basso, Mark Webber, Jake Weary, Tone Bell, and Kaiwi Lyman.
Jessica Alba is also set to star in a thriller series Confessions on the 7:45 from Netflix, which is based on the novel of the same name by Lisa Unger. The series follows a working mom who meets a stranger on a train who changes her life. Charise Castro Smith is attached to write, executive produce, and serve as showrunner.
At the time, there aren’t any official release dates for Jessica Alba’s upcoming projects. We’ll just have to wait to see when Netflix and Disney+ will be releasing these projects. Stay tuned in the meantime for more news on Alba and her upcoming work.
