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Did Jessica Alba Almost Quit Acting? Inside the ‘Fantastic Four’ Incident That Made Her Reconsider
Jessica Alba is a household name now, but the actress revealed she once came close to walking away from Hollywood. Life & Style looks back on an incident that took place while filming for Fantastic Four which led the star to reconsider her career path.
Did Jessica Alba Almost Quit Acting?
The movie star told PopEater in 2010 that while filming for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, director Tim Story allegedly criticized her performance during an emotional scene.
“[He told me] ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.’ He was like, ‘Don’t do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in,’” she claimed. “And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough?”
“Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don’t want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘F–k it. I don’t care about this business anymore,’” Jessica said about the incident.
The director did not address her claims.
Jessica Alba Says Becoming a Mom Changed Her Priorities
The Sin City star said welcoming daughter Honor in June 2008 transformed how she viewed her health and her career.
“My mother had cancer at a really young age. Many women in my family have passed from various different cancers, none of them genetic,” she told Romper for her March cover story in 2021. “I had five surgeries before I was 11 years old. I had chronic allergies, and I was hospitalized a lot as a child.”
“I had this real moment of, I want to live, and thrive, and spend as much time with this little person that I’m bringing into the world as possible and stay,” she said about becoming a first-time parent. “So, my health matters. I want this little person to be healthy. And it’s really freaking hard to be happy when you don’t have your health.”
“My motivation was not like, ‘Am I ever going to get hired again?’ Frankly, I was at the top of my career,” Jessica said, revealing that after her daughter came into the world, she “couldn’t go back to what I was doing before and be authentic. I just couldn’t.”
“I just didn’t care about it anymore the same way,” she added. “It was something bigger.”
Jessica Alba Is a Parent of 3 and It Inspired Her to Launch a Wellness Brand
In addition to her daughter Honor, Jessica became a mother to daughter Haven and son Hayes with her now-estranged husband, Cash Warren, from whom she filed for divorce in February 2025.
The Honey actress suffered an allergic reaction during her first pregnancy after prewashing onesies with a mainstream laundry detergent brand, inspiring her to research other products.
She later cofounded The Honest Company alongside Christopher Gavigan and Brian Lee in 2012, and it expanded to include a makeup and skincare line.
Jessica served as Chief Creative Officer of her passion project, which was valued at $1.7 billion in 2015, until April 2024.
At that time, she stepped down from her leadership role but stayed on as a member of the company’s board of directors. Jessica sold 465,000 shares for $3.5 million in December 2024.
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