starring in cult dance movie Honey, Frank Miller’s Sin City and the blockbuster Fantastic Four films, she also made smart, of-kilter choices such as Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me (in which her face was beaten to a pulp, as if trying to destroy her beauty à la Charlize Theron in Monster). Meanwhile, she fell in love with producer Cash Warren on the set of Fantastic Four. They married in 2008 and have two daughters: Honor, eight, and Haven, four.
Ambition is so important because you only live ONCE. Where do you want to go? Who do you WANT to be?
SO FAR, SO DREAMY. BUT IT’S REALLY ONLY IN HER THIRTIES THAT ALBA HAS TAKEN CONTROL OF HER CAREER AND HER IMAGE IN A SURPRISING WAY.
In 2011, disappointed at the lack of afordable chemicalfree baby products on the market, she launched The Honest Company. Initially focusing on nappies, it now sells everything from organic moisturisers and vitamins to cleaning products and tampons. “I didn’t anticipate any of it,” she tells me. “I just looked at the injustice of how people with money had access to products and information to live a healthier life. I wanted to make it easier for people – and make it accessibly priced, beautifully designed and convenient.” The Honest Company products are not yet available in the UK, but the company is already worth $1.7 billion, and Alba recently ranked number 42 on Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women, with a net worth of $340 million. And she appreciates every last dollar of it. “Until I got pregnant, I was just happy to have a job,” she laughs. “When I started making money, I was all about saving it – a cash-under-the-mattress person. I didn’t grow up with money so, if I was going to make it, I would be responsible and make sure it lasted a long time. So that was my idea of success. I didn’t want to worry about money, I wanted to be financially secure.” She’s certainly secure now, but it hasn’t come easily. “For every leap forward, it’s like there were 20 steps back,” she says, smiling ruefully. This woman is not afraid of hard work, having been acting since the age of 12, and not in the cushy role of a pampered child star. “Oh, I was not successful,” she says. “I was barely getting by, until Dark Angel [James Cameron’s sci-fi TV series, 2000-2002]. That was my first big thing.”
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espite her huge commercial success, Alba has to deal with the deeply ingrained sexism in business. She recently described repeated comparisons to Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop empire as “unfair” because “people aren’t lumping Justin Timberlake and Ashton Kutcher together. They do other businesses. When you get success in one area, you’re supposed to evolve and try something else – especially in business, and especially if you’re a man.” And it’s true that Goop and Honest are very diferent, with Alba’s company focused on making organic products afordable and available to all. The main similarity between
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the two actresses-turned-entrepreneurs seems to be they have ambitions outside of the box in which they found themselves pigeonholed. I suggest ambition is often a dirty word for women. Most of us have heard it as a criticism: “Well, so-and-so seems nice, but she’s very ambitious.” Alba nods furiously. “But men should be ambitious, right?” I love her passion: she’s clearly frustrated by the injustice and keen to set the world to rights. “We have to look at, culturally, what we celebrate in women versus what we celebrate in men,” she continues. “I love my family and I love being at home and cooking, but my husband does just as much of all of that as I do. We are equal partners in raising our kids, we are equal partners in what we do in the home, and we are equal partners in going out and working. Ambition is so important because you only live once. So where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? Well, take the bull by the horns and go for it. There’s never going to be the perfect time to try something. More women should start companies.” Alba’s parents were just 20 when she was born. Her mother was a lifeguard and her father worked for the Air Force so they moved around – Mississippi and Texas – before settling in California. She once said she felt they “grew up together” because her parents were so young. “My parents are fun,” she says. “They love to have a good time, and they laugh a lot. And that is something