For a period in the noughties, Jessica Alba was the undeniable “it girl” of Hollywood.
The A-list actress made a name for herself as the ultimate girl-next-door character in a slew of hit movies, including Honey, Into The Blue, Fantastic Four and Never Been Kissed.
She began her acting career as a teenager in Camp Nowhere and first rose to prominence in the popular TV series, Dark Angel.
But after a long spell in the mid-2000s winning fans on the screen, Alba, 41, pivoted away from acting and slowly but surely stopped taking on major roles.
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Did Jessica Alba quit acting?
Alba has made a handful of appearances on the small screen after fading from the spotlight, including starring as Nancy McKenna in the series LA’s Finest.
However, since 2012, the mother-of-three has had quite a career change.
She launched her eco-conscious baby product company The Honest Company and she dedicated her time and effort to running this business.
The idea for the company was born after her newborn daughter broke out in hives after wearing baby clothes washing in detergent.
A year after her company was launched, it sold around $10 million (approx. $14 million) of products, mostly nappies and wipes.
Now, her products are available in 4,400 stores and The Honest Company is worth around $550 million (approx. $819 million) as of 2022.
Alba’s interest in health and wellness also stems from her own health issues as a child.
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The actress would regularly suffer pneumonia three to four times a year and was hospitalised various times over a collapsed lung, a ruptured appendix and a tonsillar cyst.
“My mother had cancer at a really young age, in her early 20s. I grew up with chronic illness. I had five surgeries before I was 11 years old. I had chronic allergies, and I was hospitalised a lot as a child,” she told Romper in 2021.
After becoming a mother, Alba said she wanted to renew her focus on being healthy and looking after her childrens’ health.
“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 added.
“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.”
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What is Jessica Alba doing now and will she act again?
According to Alba, while she took a step back from acting roles to focus on her business, she never really retired from Hollywood.
“I’m open to diving back into acting. It’s my passion and my heart,” Alba told Working Mother.
“I didn’t take time off from acting completely, but I certainly didn’t make it a focus.”
Her last official credit was in 2021 after her stint on LA’s Finest came to an end in 2020.
According to IMDB, she only has one upcoming film called Trigger Warning, which is in post-production.
In 2010, Alba spoke candidly about her experience in Hollywood and explained one incident was part of the reason she stopped accepting big roles.
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She described a time while filming Fantastic Four, where the director offered some harsh criticism of her acting.
“I wanted to stop acting,” Alba admitted in an interview with Elle Magazine.
“[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’.
“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’.”
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Who are Jessica Alba’s husband and children?
While she’s not busy running her own multi-million dollar business, Alba is raising her three children with her producer husband Cash Warren.
Alba and Warren, 44, met on the set of Fantastic Four in 2004 when he was working as a production assistant.
“Right after I met [Cash], I called my best friend and was like, ‘I met this guy and I feel like I’ve known him forever and I’m gonna know him for the rest of my life,’ ” Alba told Cosmopolitan in 2010.
The couple tied the knot in 2008 and welcomed their first daughter Honor, now 14, a month later.
Alba also shares a younger daughter Haven, 11, and a five-year-old son, Hayes, with Warren.
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