It’s worth noting that Jessica Alba has struggled her whole life with how she looks. In 2006 she told Elle in a separate interview that she was rejected from her church because, they felt, she was trying to deliberately attract men. She was blamed for the way she looked and pilloried as a result. She also didn’t like how the church eventually revealed itself to be judgmental and homophobic and handily left her faith behind.
By “Rise of the Silver Surfer,” Alba had carved out an impressive film career, having appeared in hit films like “Never Been Kissed,” “Idle Hands,” “Honey,” and “Sin City.” She also, in 2000, starred in James Cameron’s post-apocalyptic TV series “Dark Angel,” so Alba was a household name. Alba assumed that she was hired for movies because of her talents, but Tim Story once gave her a piece of direction that had everything to do with her looks. It wasn’t overtly sexist or creepy — Story is, by all accounts, a perfectly decent human being — but it did have Alba questioning what she was doing on set. She said:
“I remember when I was dying in ‘Silver Surfer.’ […] The director was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? … Don’t do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.’ […] 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 real person? … And so I just said, ‘f*** it. I don’t care about this business anymore.'”
Don’t act. Just cry pretty. One can see how it might instigate an existential crisis.
Jessica Alba played Sue Storm in Marvel’s previous Fantastic Four movies. One scene in the second film, however, gave her a bit of an existential crisis. Read More