Actress Jessica Alba is rarely seen on the celebrity radar and it has become clear that she is slowly choosing to live her life away from the harsh spotlight of Hollywood. However, movies and the pressure of career may not have been the only factors that propelled the star to opt for this low-key life. The well-known actress went through a very difficult time during her childhood and it may have had a huge role in impacting the way her life has turned out.
During her childhood, she went through phases when she was branded as a 'slut' in school, she broke her virginity pact with an 'old' boyfriend and was also kidnapped at the age of 15, an incident which she never speaks about. These and more incidents may have gone in shaping the actress' current choice of living, reports The Sun.
The actress was on the set of her first show, Flipper, in 1996 when she began receiving strange calls which she dismissed as a prank. However, shortly after this the then 15-year-old was kidnapped and was missing for around 14 hours. After a long and extensive search, she was discovered bound, blindfolded, and gagged in the trunk of a car. The case had to be dismissed as Jessica was unable to provide any information and has refused to answer any questions on her horrific experience.
Even as a child health issues constantly troubled her. She had partially collapsed and ruptured lungs and often suffered from asthma and pneumonia several times a year. She was also diagnosed with having hyperactivity disorder, and also an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Like any teenager, understanding her physical growth and accepting the changes proved to be a difficult time. Society too wasn't making things any easier. Jessica's family were born-again Christians but the church was very disapproving of Jessica's looks and appearance. She said, "Older men would hit on me, and my youth pastor said it was because I was wearing provocative clothing, when I wasn't. It just made me feel like if I was in any way desirable to the opposite sex that it was my fault, and it made me ashamed of my body and being a woman." She had developed breasts at a fairly young age and was called a 'slut' as a child by one of the school's administrators.
She was also bullied by fellow students which resulted in her feeling very confused about her body image and she then developed an eating disorder. Jessica revealed, "A lot of girls have eating disorders and I did too. I became obsessed with it. I never see myself as a beautiful woman and have never traded on that to get ahead in this business."
Even though she grew up in a very religious family who were against sex before marriage, Jessica dated "whoever asked her out" but she had one rule- she never slept with them. She had previously said, "I basically went out with any guy who asked me because hardly anyone ever asked me out. I remember this one guy who really liked me. He was so boring that I ordered a hamburger and ate it in a really masculine way, like a pig, dripping and chewing with my mouth open".
"I think I even may have burped…anything to get him not to like me so the date would finally be over. But he just liked me more. It was horrible," she continued. However, she stayed a virgin and avoided going to parties. When she started seeing the world of showbiz as a young adult, she started to question the church's teachings. She also fell in love with a ballet dancer who was a bisexual man and would frequent a gay club at least 4 nights a week.
Jessica shared, "I was so in love with him and thought, 'There’s no way this guy’s going to hell. My born-again Christian friends didn’t approve of that. It was very twisted." When she was filming 'Dark Angel' she dated her co-star Michael Weatherly for around four years and on her 20th birthday, he proposed to her. Jessica's parents did not approve of the relationship as they had a 12 year age gap.
Three years later, the couple broke up in the year 2003. Jessica recalled, "I was so young, 18, when I started dating him. I was a virgin. I knew I wanted to be in love with the first person I slept with because for almost everyone I knew, the first experience made them feel like s***. Jessica then had a phase of dating many men and she admits that she "enjoyed a wild period with men for a second."
Jessica met producer Cash Warren while filming 'Fantastic Four' in the year 2004, and told Cosmo the next year, "He's not famous. He might be The One. It was kind of a love-at-first-sight thing, but I met him when I was dating someone else, so it started off as a friendship. The first week that we kind of got together, he gave me a note and signed it with a dollar sign, because his name is Cash. It just said, ‘I really, really like you.’ And that was exactly how I felt at the time," she shared. She then got pregnant with their first daughter in 2008 and the couple got married in a secret and intimate ceremony which had no guests.
Later on, Jessica began to feel typecast in the industry and felt it was time she should leave films. This was sometime after 2009. From then she began doing fewer movies and took to doing a handful cameos. Her interest meanwhile, was completely taken up her business venture we now know her by - The Honest Company. The self-started business, a collection of household goods and baby products - is worth a whopping $1billion (£770million), reports the Sun.
Now in 2018, 37-year-old Jessica is an entrepreneur, with a net worth of £270million but who loves living the 'normal' life with husband Cash and their three children, daughters Honor, 10, Haven, seven, and son Hayes, 10 months.
