Fantastic Four almost made Jessica Alba quit acting

So as the headline says, filming FANTASTIC FOUR (or more specifically RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER) made Jessica Alba want to quit acting. What a coincidence, it made me want to quit watching movies!

In the same article in which she diminished the work of screenwriters (the full version of which is only now available online), Alba had some harsh words for directors too. Asked why her recent films have been both critical and commercial disappointments, she answered simply, “First-time directors.”

One of the directors on her shitlist would apparently be FANTASTIC FOUR director Tim Story. Recalls Alba, “[He said] ‘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 I’m like, But there’s no connection to a human being. 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-ck it. I don’t care about this business anymore.”

So motivated she was by this incident, Alba went on to star in GOOD LUCK CHUCK, AWAKE, THE EYE and THE LOVE GURU.

If it sounds like I’m coming down hard on Alba (get your mind out of the gutter, perv), I suppose I am but only because it seems to be a self-perpetuating situation. I understand that some actresses are asked to do retarded things like “cry pretty” but the quick answer is to stop making movies like that.

KILLER INSIDE ME was a step in the right direction but Alba hated that film and her next move was to film SPY KIDS 4. I sympathize with her to some degree but there are plenty of young actresses making smart choices (Scarlett Johansson – hate her or not – can do both IRON MAN 2 and MATCH POINT), that Alba needs to do a little better on her own end before criticizing writers and directors.