Jessica Alba Honestly Thinks She’s a Good Actress. Honest.

 

Apparently somewhere along the way, someone, somewhere, convinced Jessica Alba that she’s an actual, honest to goodness actress who isn’t just another pretty face. Look, I get it — some dude wanted to get in her pants and told her some big fat lies. But apparently it stuck, because from what we’ve been hearing from Jessica Alba lately is that she’s, uh, a really good actress who hasn’t really gotten the right parts to show off her wares yet. Or if she has, she’s been torpedoed either by bad writing or bad directors.

In an interview with Elle Magazine this month, Alba famously opined this on the topic of screenwriters and what it means to be a “good actor”:

Good actors, never use the script unless it’s amazing writing. All the good actors I’ve worked with, they all say whatever they want to say. Lest you think Alba was misquoted, she goes on to declare how bad directors have similarly clashed with her acting:

    I remember when I was dying in ‘Silver Surfer. The director was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry?… Don’t do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.’

    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 real person?… And so I just said, ‘F*** it. I don’t’ care about this business anymore.

Screenwriter John August (“Big Fish”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory “) took offense to her first quote about good scripts, writing on his blog:

 Following your logic, you’ve never been in a movie with both good actors and amazing writing. That may be true, but it might hurt the feelings of David Wain, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.

Again, I get it, Jessica Alba is desired and famous and she’s surrounded by Yes men and women who have convinced her she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don’t blame her, but to go so publicly and say this stuff? Someone’s really been blowing lies in the girl’s ear.

Although, it could explain why she did Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me”, where she played a prostitute who gets murdered. That is probably her most daring and most “actress”-ish role to date. (And no, I don’t consider playing a stripper who never actually strips in “Sin City” to be very risque whatsoever.) The rest of her filmography? Not exactly signs that someone wants to be taken seriously as an actress, or someone who “just say whatever they want to say”. I’m just sayin’.

Below, Jessica flashes the acting skills to pay the bills: