Why Jessica Alba Was Never The Same After Fantastic Four

By the time «Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer» was released, Jessica Alba was a global icon, though perhaps not for the reasons she initially wanted. For most of the 2000s, Alba was consistently included in lists ranking her as one of the sexiest actresses in Hollywood, and she was featured on the covers of magazines like Maxim, Sports Illustrated, and GQ numerous times. In an interview with Elle magazine, Alba stressed how the constant perception of her as a sex symbol kept resulting in typecasting, saying, «Contrary to how people may feel, I’ve never used my sexuality. That’s not part of it for me.»

Nevertheless, it took some real effort from Alba to try to shake off this public image of her as a sex symbol. For one, the actress refused to do nudity in films and would go out of her way to reject roles that would have required her to strip. Though films like «Sin City,» in which she played an exotic dancer, made this more common, she emphasized that her interest in that role was due to the complexity of the character. 

There were some instances when Alba was forced to take legal action to battle this misaligned public perception of her, such as when she sued Playboy magazine for non-consensually using an image of her from the film «Into the Blue,» though she dropped the charges after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner publicly apologized to her.