Jessica Alba was once close to calling time on her acting career following an alleged comment from the director of one of her most memorable films.
Alba broke onto the Hollywood scene with her role in dance film Honey as the titular character, later landing on roles in 2000s classics such as Sin City and Good Luck Chuck.
However, one of the roles that the American actor is best known for is as Sue Storm, also known as 'The Invisible Girl' who had the power to project force fields, in the Fantastic Four duo-logy - though released by Fox - it was one of the first Marvel films to make a splash at the box office.
She played the character in the first film and its sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, alongside Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm or 'The Thing'.
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All four of the members in the superhero team got their powers the same way after they were hit by cosmic energy clouds in space.
Despite not being considered one of the best superhero flicks, the film is fondly remembered by many that grew up on the title, which came out in 2005.
However, Alba seemingly doesn't look back as fondly on the movie.
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In 2010, Alba previously told PopEater (via Vulture) that while filming for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, directed by Tim Story, he allegedly criticised her performance.
In a scene where she was crying, she claimed he said that her tears were too 'real' and 'painful', even going as far to ask if she could 'be prettier' when she cried.
The 43-year-old added: "He was like, ‘Don’t do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in'.
"And then 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 person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, ‘F**k it. I don’t care about this business anymore'."
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But as we all know, the Spy Kids star kept acting, and following The Rise of the Silver Surfer, she starred in numerous films including The Eye, Machete, and Barely Lethal.
An reboot of the superhero series even followed in 2015, starring the likes of Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan, however, it didn't do very well with critics or audiences.
On Rotten Tomatoes, it received 9 per cent on its TomatoMeter, while the PopcornMeter was 18 per cent.
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Alba took a step back from acting in order to focus on her health following the birth of her first child, telling PEOPLE in 2021: "That's really what motivated me. My motivation was not like, 'Am I ever going to get hired again?' Frankly, I was at the top of my career."
LADbible has contacted Story's reps for comment.
Joshua Nair