For Jessica Alba, Hollywood is not the same playground it used to be in the early years of her career. Even so, the Fantastic Four actress remembers a time when prejudice and bias took precedence over talent and she received the short end of the stick in that regard.
But very similar to her case, the music legend Jennifer Lopez has faced criticism time and again throughout her career. Be it as a singer, a dancer, an actor, or a businesswoman, Lopez’s fight against the industry inspired Alba somewhere along the way. Later, it was her brutal experience that made the actress apathetic to the socio-political progress within Hollywood circles.
Jessica Alba Takes a Stand Against Haters
A young Jennifer Lopez learned to fight against the whole world to achieve her dream of working in Hollywood. Her early career was fraught with movies that sexualized her instead of elevating her as an actress. However, most importantly, her physique became the topic of conversation at every event.
Soon after, Jessica Alba learned to shield herself against similar criticism. According to the actress, the insults being hurled at Jennifer Lopez only served to remind her that she was being subjected to the same, too. At a press tour interview for Lopez’s 2016 series, Shades of Blue, the singer claimed [via E! News]:
They kept telling me to lose weight, and I was a dancer and I was athletic and even my manager at the time, who I no longer work with, was telling me: ‘You need to lose weight, You need to be thinner.’ I was like, ‘No I don’t. If I lose any more weight it won’t be me’.
Lopez’s rebellious disdain toward her critics and haters was a gift only she could wield. But the sensitive and mild-tempered Jessica Alba had little to use against the haters except for her sharp words and strong will.
As such, in a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, the Fantastic Four actress defiantly declared:
I got plenty of a**. I hear people in the industry talking s*** all the time about how Jennifer Lopez is fat. And I know that if they’re calling her fat, they are saying the same s*** about me.”
Although not entirely wrong about her analysis regarding the critics and the haters – as proven by multiple tabloid headlines and paparazzi publications in the early Aughts – Alba came out the other end of the fight a survivor.
Jessica Alba Fights For Her Dignity in Hollywood
At only 19, Jessica Alba rose to global prominence when she headlined James Cameron’s sci-fi action series, Dark Angel, as a genetically enhanced super-soldier fighting against corruption in post-apocalyptic America. The television series which ran from 2000 to 2002 landed her a Golden Globe nomination.
After such a stellar origin, the actress who was supposed to land a career of definitive success instead failed to star in a single successful movie, including the 2005 Marvel film, Fantastic Four, which only garnered a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, Alba fought for artistic liberation instead of Oscar-baiting filmography as proven by the extensive variety of her work.
Now, as the industry begins to change for the better, in terms of representation as well as socio-politically appropriate vocabulary, Alba retains a fraction of the fight within her that reflects the struggles she had to endure back in the early Aughts. In an essay to InStyle, the actress wrote:
Who am I now? I give zero f***s. I have three children. They’ve exploded my body, and I’m cool with it. And I know I’m smart. I don’t care what everybody else thinks. I’m good, girl. I’m good.
Moreover, speaking about her experience in the entertainment industry, she correctly surmised:
I’d been in the [entertainment] business for over a decade, but I was still trying to figure out how to be in the public eye and have ownership over who I was. Ninety percent of what people understood about me then came purely from magazine articles, press-tour interviews, and blurbs of gossip.
Now that tabloids have become less prominent and the paparazzi are no longer the frenzied presence that they were in the early Aughts, Jessica Alba makes a slow comeback to the industry. She announced her return to acting in early 2024 with Netflix’s action flick Trigger Warning.
Her upcoming film is titled Maserati: the Brothers which is slated for a 2025 release.
