by Gill Pringle in Jeddah
Also serving as a co-producer on the film – under her Lady Metalmark banner – the Sin City star is eager to take the reins in re-launching her career, after several years off to raise her three children and promote her consumer products business, The Honest Company.
“It’s really fun and action-packed. I wanted to build a sort of romcom inside of the action genre – so, it’s a relationship movie where these two people come from two completely different sides of the world, and crash together.
“And then they have to figure out how to get out of it in one piece and work together, even though initially they really don’t get along,” she says.
“Tom is a dream of a human being and he’s super funny,” she says about her co-star Tom Hooper. “And what we did together in The Mark just reminds me of those classic relationship movies like Romancing the Stone or Moonlighting.
“We worked a lot on the script and really wanted to make it a relationship movie inside of an action movie and I think people will really like it. Justin is all about the humanity of the characters, and moving away from any stereotypes,” says Alba, 44, who also says that she was impressed by the local crews and gorgeous locations in Currumbin.
“We literally used the Gold Coast as a character in the movie. It has a really cool, edgy feel and the people were amazing.
“I was staying in Burleigh Heads and, oh my goodness, I was telling my kids every day, like: ‘Can we spend time here? Can we move here for a little bit?’
“And my mum was like: ‘It’s kind of far.’ But then I’m like: ‘I know, but still, it’s awesome here,’” says the former child actress who actually launched her career in Australia playing the role of Maya in the first two seasons of 1995 TV series Flipper.
Having learned to swim before she could walk, her PADI certified scuba diving skills were put to good use on the show.
“I was 14 when I first filmed on the Gold Coast, and it looks nothing like it used to. It’s really changed a lot,” says Alba who would later hit the big time when James Cameron cast her, aged 17, in TV series Dark Angel.
Today, she is keen to have a voice in everything she does, co-producing last year’s Netflix crime thriller Trigger Warning in which she also starred.
“It was number one in over 60 countries – even though they gave me no marketing. Not just marketing – but other things. This was not the thing where they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna totally get behind this.’
“And, despite that, we crushed it,” she says gleefully.
“It’s an action movie and I love action. I was like: ‘what if you did an action movie that had all women heads of departments, from the director, Molly Surya, to the camera department, production designers, art directors . . . all female. And guess what? You still got the action. You still got the grit. It was awesome. And it did really well,” she says proudly.
“It just shows that if you have a soul, you have a perspective, just how powerful women can be, even in a genre completely dominated by men.”
Determined to break through stereotypes – not just with gender but also with colour – she says, “When I was growing up, I didn’t see a ton of diversity in storytelling. And I don’t blame Hollywood for the reason why… you have a lot of white guys in charge, they feel the most comfortable telling stories through their lens, and they don’t know you, and they didn’t grow up with you.
“They didn’t grow up with people that look like me, and frankly, a lot of them didn’t have women that were strong, women that were not just running the household, but making the money, and in leadership roles,” says the actress who is proud of her Mexican heritage.
“Still, in corporate America, we don’t have a ton of female leadership. In our politics, we also don’t have a ton of female leadership. And so, if you don’t see that, it’s very difficult to imagine that is a story to be told. But as a woman and a woman of colour, I don’t see the boundaries that they may see. So, the stories I’m drawn to are going to naturally defy what’s even possible for them,” says the Spy Kids and Machete star, who is looking forward to collaborating again with Robert Rodriguez, finding a natural rhythm with the filmmaker, having worked together numerous times.
“I also love business and looking at things in a very logical way. I look at the opportunity – and it’s women. We’re 50% of the population. We control over 70% of the household income. I believe that we need to have more entertainment that speaks to us and speaks to our hearts, speaks to our souls, speaks to our sons, speaks to our brothers.
“Just because it’s a woman in the lead and she’s a powerful person that can think for herself, it doesn’t mean it’s not for men. It’s for everyone. Let’s show a little bit more of that, maybe a little less of women that need to be saved all the time, and you can start to shift the narrative of what’s possible – we can be a little bit more on an equal footing.
“And for the Latino audience, we love entertainment. We watch it more than any other group of people. Our stories are still very much defined by a bias of what we are and who we are, and there’s a lot of stigmas and stereotypes around Latinos, so they really love to tell those stories around cartels, drugs or domestic workers.
“But we’re a lot more than that. But again, if that’s the only way that they want to see us, and that’s the only way they do see us – it’s very difficult for them to expand their minds. It takes people like me who has a vision to be a producer to be able to support filmmakers that look like me,” argues the actress.
Not just fighting words – she’s actually putting her clout behind fellow female filmmakers, next starring in Eva Longoria’s thriller series, Confessions on the 7:45, playing a working mum who meets a stranger who upends her life.
And after that, she is supporting Dakota Johnson by starring in her directorial debut, A Tree Is Blue, a drama about a young woman on the autism spectrum who breaks free from her over-protective mother in search of freedom and friendship.
“It doesn’t matter the colour of your skin, your belief system, your culture, your community, I’m interested in telling really authentic human stories,” she says. “It’s actually better if you are different to what’s been done before, because that is the white space that’s completely untapped.”
Main Image: Jessica Alba poses for the photographer at the Red Sea International Film Festival 2025 on December 05, 2025 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival)
