Jessica Alba: ‘Women are Freaking Resilient’

Jessica Alba smoldering in an Old Hollywood beauty look in September 2015 ‘Allure’. (Photo: Carter Smith)

The Honest Company founder and actress Jessica Alba is on the September 2015 cover of Allure, and she’s tired of the way the way Hollywood women are stereotyped and pitted against each other. “What I think is unfair is to lump actresses together,” Alba told Allure, in response to being compared to Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow. “People aren’t lumping Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher together. They do other businesses. I think its expected that when you get success in one area, you’re supposed to evolve and try to do something else — especially in business, and especially, if you’re a man.” She argued that The Honest Company, most recently valued at $1.7 billion,  is about more than making money — “It’s a real social-injustice and human-health issue.”

Jessica Alba on the cover of September 2015 ‘Allure’. (Photo: Carter Smith)

The actress, who got her big break on sci-fi television series Dark Angel, has been refusing roles that degrade women. She even admitted in the magazine’s interview that she’s had some bad roles that she refuses to talk about out loud. “I never wanted to play into a stereotype, where its like, oh, you’re just the girl who gets saved by the guy, and she doesn’t know how to make decisions, and she gets overwhelmed with all this stuff happening around her,” she told Allure. “Women are freaking resilient.”

Jessica Alba in the September 2015 issue of ‘Allure’. (Photo: Carter Smith)

Nowadays, Alba is pursuing entrepreneurship and social change more than she’s pursuing blockbuster movie roles, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped being a force in Hollywood. “I wish I found my voice as a person earlier, though, because I felt like I had to just shut up and do what they wanted me to, even though it was against how I really felt,” she said. Allure hints that she may be directing in the future, following in the footsteps of leading ladies like Angelina Jolie and Diane Keaton.

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