Jessica Alba reveals film that made her almost quit acting altogether

Honey star Jessica Alba has opened up about the movie which almost led her to give up on a career in acting.

The 42-year-old actor and businesswoman first stepped into the film and TV industry at the age of 13.

However, at the age of 23, she nearly decided to abandon her career as an actor after a bad experience on set.

In Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Alba took on the role of Susan 'Sue' Storm.

Despite having received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in TV series Dark Angel, Alba's acting came under scrutiny in the Fantastic Four film.

In an emotional scene for Storm, Alba had to look like she was crying, however, director Tim Story allegedly told Alba it looked 'too real'.

Alba told PopEater, as quoted by Vulture: "[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.'"

20th Century Fox

Alba faced a similar focus on her looks in the early 2000s when she became a sex symbol.

On CNN and HBO Max's Who's Talking to Chris Wallace, she reflected on being seen as a sex symbol, but how her role in Dark Angel helped her 'distance herself' from that status.

She added: "But I guess, you know, you can't change other people's minds about what they may or may not think of you. I don't think that there's anything wrong with owning your sexuality. I just frankly was definitely not that person. I was very nervous about all of that, and I was quite uncomfortable in my own skin,."

Alba felt like she had to 'put up this armor of masculinity and masculine energy' so she wouldn't be 'preyed on because there were a lot of predators in Hollywood from age 12 to 26'.

Thankfully, despite the comments about her on-screen crying and battling with how she was viewed as a performer, Alba didn't give up on acting. And it's just as well she didn't, or she wouldn't have gone on to feature in bangers such as Valentine's Day, The Eye or Little Fockers.