Jessica Alba is GLAMOUR's July/ August cover star: ‘I approached business the way I approached Hollywood. I just did it’

On her meteoric rise from Hollywood to boss of a billion-dollar beauty business.
Jessica Alba GLAMOUR July August Interview 2022

Jessica Alba opens up to GLAMOUR's Emily Maddick about mental health, marriage, motherhood, and making the transition from Hollywood actor to beauty entrepreneur and founder of The Honest Company…

Wearing an acid-yellow blazer, an ab-baring white crop top with boyfriend jeans, pumps and a smattering of gold jewellery, Jessica Alba sits down on a pristine white sofa to shake my hand. The look has taken a number of outfit-changes to get right, with Jessica keen to achieve the right vibe. And as we start to chat, I can’t help but think that what she’s wearing really does perfectly epitomise this 41-year-old powerhouse of a woman; it’s one part cool, sassy, sexy Hollywood A-lister; one part, co-founder of a billion-dollar business empire and also, one part ‘Mom-on-the-school run’. And this is exactly who Jessica Alba is: Multi-faceted. Multi-talented.

Photography Dennis Leupold Makeup Mai Quynh Hair Jesus Guerrero for Honest Beauty at The Wall Group Hair Assistant Jinju Bae Stylist Sophie Lopez Stylist Assistant Thanda Gibson

“You have to be relentless,” she tells me early on in our conversation when discussing her ascent from Golden Globe-nominated actor to co-founder of The Honest Company – a wellness and beauty brand that strives to create clean, sustainable products and protect its consumers from harmful toxins – all the while raising three kids and being half of one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages, to film producer Cash Warren.

“I don’t have a fear of failure,” she adds. “I have the opposite: I have a fear of, ‘If I didn’t try, [then] what’s the point?’”

Jessica is nothing if not meticulous. Upon arriving on set for the GLAMOUR cover shoot at the breathtaking mountain-top location mansion (complete with helipad) in the wilds of Kardashian-land, AKA Calabasas, an hour north of Los Angeles, it is immediately clear that the boss – or ‘Boss Babe’ as she is on the Honest website – is in the building. The energy cranks up a notch.

Jessica and her entourage inspect every element of the set, checking out the pool she’ll be shooting GLAMOUR’s July/ August cover in, ordering heaters for when she’s out of the water (it’s a chilly April morning up in the mountains), and rounding up her team to shoot a quick synchronised TikTok group dance video before appraising all the fashion looks for the day, then settling into hair and makeup.

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It’s been just over 10 years since Jessica co-founded The Honest Company and as we start to talk, it becomes apparent that ‘Honest’ is not just the name of her company – it is Jessica’s M.O in every aspect of her life. She’s direct and not afraid to say what she wants or thinks.

Throughout our conversation, which covers everything from mental health, marriage, maternity rights, mistakes, mentors (Arianna Huffington is one of hers), Hollywood, discrimination, political lobbying, parenting, sustainability, and running a hugely successful brand, Jessica is always keen to return to her innate desire to be truthful. “If you’re deep down a good, decent person, it’s hard not to be good,” she says. “I’m not wrestling with doing the right thing. That’s not something I’ve really struggled with.”

But that’s not to say her journey has been without its struggles. It was Jessica’s own battles with ill health during childhood, and then again when she was pregnant with her first child Honor, that inspired her to found The Honest Company. Initially selling baby and household cleaning products, it has now ballooned to incorporate beauty, wellness and clothing ranges. Suffering from chronic allergies, asthma, regular bouts of pneumonia, and even partially collapsed lungs as a child, Jessica was “in the hospital a lot.” Her mother also had cancer when she was only 22. Then, when Jessica was pregnant in 2008, she had a severe allergic reaction to a laundry detergent designed for babies, which frightened her.

“I was like, ‘There’s a child inside here, what if she is allergic to everything like I was?” she recalls today. “What could possibly cause a reaction? Because I was fine before I used this laundry detergent.’ And I learned that there [seemed to be] lots of untested, potentially harmful chemicals that are in detergents and beauty products, and personal-care products, and bath and body products. And we’re inundated with thousands of chemicals, actually every day, that we choose to put on us.”

Wanting to safeguard her family, Jessica started doing her own research.

“I really couldn’t shop around the problem, because I didn’t feel there was really one brand that made things with honesty, integrity, with ethics, with values that cared about human health.” she states. “[I asked] can we have naturally derived, clean, safe products, including makeup? Makeup was a big deal for me because I was an actress.

“I mean, you had to go to, like, a university that studied chemicals to even understand the link to certain chemicals in human health! And I thought, ‘This is just too hard for people and it’s got to be easier.’ That’s where the idea came from.”

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So she spent the next few years studying and talking to experts. She also took it upon herself to lobby US congress, using her profile to speak out about chemical safety and transparency in consumer products, campaigning for the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 to be passed. “Politicians understand that there are certain people who influence their voters,” she says, telling me of how she was received by congress. “They do have an understanding and a respect for people who can galvanise an audience and get the attention around what they’re talking about.”

This all led to her joining forces with three partners Brian Lee, Christopher Gavigan and Sean Kane, all experts in their respective fields of e-commerce, children’s health and digital entrepreneurship – in 2012 to create The Honest Company.

In 2015, the business landed Jessica on the cover of Forbes magazine as one of the richest self-made women in the United States with an estimated personal wealth of $200million.

Last year, just days after her 40th birthday, The Honest Company went public via IPO on Nasdaq with a $1.4billion valuation.

Jessica wears dress, David Koma, earrings, Jenny Bird

I ask her how she made the transition from actor to business mogul and her response is characteristically frank: “I approached it the way I approached Hollywood, which was that I just did it.”

To understand Jessica’s incredible drive for success, you have to go back to her childhood and not just her battles with ill health.

Born in Pomona, California on the outskirts of Los Angeles to deeply religious Catholic parents Catherine and Mark (who is of Mexican descent), Jessica Marie and her younger brother Joshua moved around a lot as children, due to her father’s career in the US Air Force.

“I grew up in survival mode,” she tells me. “It was almost sort of what I was born into. My parents didn’t have a safety net, they were living paycheck to paycheck. And so the mentality of ‘tomorrow’s not guaranteed’... For me, I was like, ‘I got to do everything I can to keep my head above water.’”

She adds, “I think because no one had any expectations that I would be successful, how could you fail? I wasn’t set up – no one was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to be…’ They were just like, ‘Here’s your life.’ And I was like, ‘This is some bullshit. I want a better life than that. I don’t want to be in survival mode all the time.’”

Jessica started acting at the age of 11, after winning an acting competition in Beverly Hills. “I wanted to be an actress since, forever. I think I always fantasised about living in someone else’s skin and someone else’s reality,” she reveals. “I think I’m naturally an introvert. So for me, it was a way to fit into the world if I get to be somebody else.”

She was then signed by an agent and landed her first small role in feature film Camp Nowhere when she was 13. By 19, she had a recurring role on James Cameron’s hit TV show Dark Angel, which garnered her a Golden Globe nomination in 2001. Her breakthrough on the big screen was 2003’s cult hit Honey, in which she played an aspiring dance teacher, paving the way for roles in films such as Marvel’s Fantastic Four (2005), Sin City (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007), Little Fockers (2010) and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014).

It was on set of Fantastic Four in Vancouver in 2004 that a then 23-year-old Jessica met her future husband, producer Cash Warren, now father to their three children, Honor, 14, Haven, 10, and Hayes, 4. Jessica confirms that when they first met, he slipped her a note, signed with a dollar sign (Cash!) that said, ‘I really, really like you.’ “True story, he did!” she says laughing.

The couple went on to marry in 2008, when Jessica was heavily pregnant with Honor.

“We eloped and I think I was nine months pregnant!” she recalls with more laughter. “It wasn’t planned. It was literally, ‘Honey, do you have anything to do this morning?’ And he was like, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘Should we go to the courthouse and get married?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ And then I said, ‘Can we get waffles afterwards because I have a doctor’s appointment? Will you come to my doctor’s appointment?’ And that’s how it happened!”

Jessica has recently acknowledged how hard it is to sustain a long marriage and when I ask what their secret is, she tells me, “I think just over-communicating, not letting things build up for too long.”

As a woman of Latina heritage, Jessica has spoken out in the past about how in the early years of her career in Hollywood, there was little diversity or representation for women of colour on screen; she struggled to land leading-lady roles and was often labelled ‘exotic’. I ask her if she’s seen a change in the industry in recent years?

Jessica wears top, Gauge 81, skirt, belt & shoes, Brandon Maxwell, rings, Jennifer Fisher & Jenny Bird , earrings & bracelet, Ariana Boussard

“Yeah,” she nods. “It’s a business initiative for people now that they realise how much money they can make. It’s something they care about, which is fine. How they get there really doesn’t matter. You’re like, “Great. Now you realise there’s a whole group of folks that you just frankly left out of the conversation because you just didn’t even see them. They were there the whole time.” And I guess it’s the people in charge. However they get there, it really genuinely doesn’t matter. I just think more for the younger people who are coming up, who are going to be our future leaders, it’s important for them to see the world on screen, or in stories, in the dreams that we create as entertainers; it reflects the world that they’re in.

However, she still feels like there is a way to go, especially with some of the bigger film franchises.

“Even if you look at the Marvel movies – that’s the biggest driver of fantasy and what’s happening right now in entertainment, because it’s sort of the family thing – it’s still quite Caucasian,” she says before referring to when she starred in the Fantastic Four Marvel franchise in the ’90s. “I would say I was one of the few back in the day... And it was before Marvel was sold to Disney... but it’s still quite… more of the same.”

The conversation turns to feminism and Jessica tells me that her father instilled in her a sense of equality from a young age. “I’ve identified as a feminist since I could remember identifying as anything,” she says. “I believe that women should be equal to men. And so does my dad. My dad’s a feminist, too.”

But she is clearly deeply frustrated today by the gender disparity that remains in Hollywood, the business world and wider society.

“It’s the same in business and in Hollywood – if you have people in charge who aren’t really reflective of the audience you’re appealing to, they only know what they know. They only know what they like. And so they’re going to gravitate towards more of the same. And 50% of the population, we’re women. And we like action movies, and we like superheroes, and we like romantic comedies, and we like dramas and horror, and all of that. But if 90% of the people in charge don’t look like us, they’re just going to continue to do the same,” she says.

“The system just has to be more diverse. Especially when 60% of people entering the workforce are women. But then when you get to executive level and C-suite, VP and above, it really diminishes to [around] 14%, 15%. So you’re like, ‘What the hell happened?’ We started at 60% and then now we’re at 15%, 14%? What’s going on?’ I would say a lot of it has to do with women’s health and support around our health and our bodies. We’re complex and we need to be treated with care. And we can’t sort of be demeaned and shamed for having complex bodies that actually create life.”

Jessica wears top, Proenza Schouler, earrings, Ariana Boussard

While our conversation took place weeks before last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, Jessica tells me she is also frustrated by America’s poor maternity rights system.

“That is why a lot of women fall out of the workforce because there is no real support system in our country,” she says with rising anger. “And there’s a ton of guilt and shame and bias, people in power who just simply have no idea what it’s like and what’s going on.”

Jessica’s own parenting journey has been well documented on her social media channels and her two daughters and son appear in much of The Honest Company’s brand imagery. Indeed, just days before we meet, a cute video pops up on Jessica’s YouTube channel where 10-year-old Haven interviews her parents for ‘The Most Cringeworthy Parenting Questions’.

Jessica recently spoke out with her trademark candour about going to therapy with her eldest daughter, Honor, and she reveals to me that she now goes with both her girls.

“I went with both of them. And around puberty is when it’s the time I think, for me, with my girls. That’s when they started to sort of shut down and get really like, ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’ And I’m like, ‘We’re not doing this. We’ve got to keep a line of communication here. How can I be a better parent to you? How do you want me to talk to you? Don’t shut me out.’”

I ask what impact this has had on their mother-daughter relationship and she tells me it’s nothing but positive.

“First of all, this person [the therapist] has studied human behaviour and they’re good at it. And they have no relation to you so they can be really objective and you create a safe space for your kid to really candidly tell you what’s not working about your parenting,” she tells me. “I was like, ‘Look, I’m not perfect. I’m not going to know all the answers, but I want to be a great parent to you. And what you like and don’t is different from what your sister likes and doesn’t like. And I’m going to make mistakes. Here’s a safe space, you can’t get in trouble – l let me know what I’m doing wrong, or what you would like me to do differently. Or how do you want me to discipline you when you do screw up? What does that look like for you? And how would you want to be treated so you can still feel like you have your dignity intact?’”

On the subject of screwing up, I am keen to talk about Jessica’s own relationship with her mental health (she’s a big fan of meditation) and how she has weathered the more turbulent times, especially in her business journey with Honest, during which there have been some definite bumps along the road. Including when, back in 2015, The Honest Company hit headlines due to a number of lawsuits stemming from customer allegations that the company mislabelled products and that some contained non-natural ingredients. The company denied the claims and the lawsuits were later either settled or dismissed.

All this understandably had an impact on the business. Nevertheless, Honest weathered the storm and according to Forbes, since 2017 the company chaired by Jessica has now ‘cut down its workforce, discontinued some of its offerings, upgraded or reformulated 90% of its products.’ It must have been a difficult time for the woman who, early on in her business career, so publicly lobbied congress about chemical safety and transparency in consumer products.

Jessica tells me that through surviving the tougher times in her business journey she’s learnt to listen to her gut more. “It’s interesting because trusting my intuition or my gut, I felt like I had to validate it, because it’s hard to validate a feeling,” she reflects. “That’s hard to do, especially when you’ve never been in that situation before.”

Jessica wears top & skirt, Proenza Schouler, bracelets & earring, Ariana Boussard, ring, Joanna Laura Constantine

But today when we discuss how she’s coped with and navigated the biggest challenges in her business, Jessica tells me that she’s also learnt the power of celebrating mistakes, something she’s recently started doing, after talking with fellow CEOs and entrepreneurs.

“There’s nothing more telling that you’re evolving and that you are getting better as a person in this life,” she says of learning from mistakes. “It’s a teaching, it’s a gift. I was like, ‘That is so interesting and so cool that [these are] some of the most successful people I’ve ever met, and we’re all talking about celebrating mistakes!’... because I wouldn’t say the challenges or mistakes were anything other than the opportunity to be better tomorrow.”

So, what’s next for The Honest Company? I know that the business is keen to talk about its environmental credentials and plans to improve them with its #gethonest sustainability campaign. We discuss her carbon neutral ambitions for the company as well as her personal quest to constantly improve packaging.

“It’s interesting because obviously when I started the company, I had these grandiose ideas about packaging and sustainability, and supply chain and how it’s all going to work,” she tells me. “And then when you get into the reality of order quantities and scaling your business, and raw materials and delivering consistency, you kind of understand the constraints of an idea – and in its purest form, it’s maybe just not possible…

“So, we have tin. We have glass. We have upcycled and recycled materials,” she says with an enthusiasm that shows she really is hands-on about this. “I’m always asking them [the team] to find new materials for outer container packaging, paper alternatives… And what’s cool is it’s ever-evolving. You’re never stopping…”

And on that note, I think that what’s apparent after spending an hour in the exceedingly impressive Ms Alba’s company is that she too is ever-evolving and never, ever, stopping.

Jessica Alba's beauty memo…

What’s the most radical thing you’ve ever done in the name of beauty?

Probably fighting for chemical legislation reform [lobbying US Congress for the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011] to try and get more transparency and force companies to really think about the chemicals that they use in products and test them for safety prior to bringing them into the marketplace.

Growing up, what was your relationship like with your hair?

I grew up in a Mexican-American family and they really feel like girls’ hair should be long. And so when I started acting, I actually got a haircut from Chris McMillan, who did the Rachel cut from Friends. And I think it was actually my first official haircut that my mom didn’t give me. My hair was down to my butt and when I came home with the Rachel cut, it was like these really extreme layers. My dad tried to ground me. It was so crazy. I kind of feel like hair… you should just have fun with it; it grows.

What is your biggest beauty vice?

I know the sun is not good for the skin. I know, but I just love it! I just love being out in nature. I love taking hikes. I love all the beaches… I will wear a hat and I will absolutely wear sunscreen, but I don’t stay out of the sun.

What is the best life-changing beauty hack you’ve learned?

I would say [seeing] the inner beauty, actually. Growing up in entertainment, there’s so much emphasis on appearance and trying to fit some mould that feels on trend… of what you should look like or not look like or what is beautiful. And I really feel like the more I worked on myself and I felt confident in my own skin, that’s when I felt the most beautiful. And wildly, it happened after I was 30.

Your beauty cabinet is on fire, what three products would you save?

Definitely the Extreme Length Mascara by Honest Beauty… the Hydrogel Cream as well, which is a moisturiser that literally feels like water is being splashed on your face. And it’s this time-release hydration. It’s amazing. It’s not heavy, but it feels super-luxurious and it doesn’t have any fragrances. I have such allergic skin. And Prime + Perfect Mask, because I feel like whether it’s during the day or at night, I need that little me time and it smells like a smoothie. It’s like a smoothie for my face.

Honest Beauty is available to buy in the UK online and in-store from Boots and Look Fantastic.