The “humiliating” scene Jessica Alba dreaded shooting: “It was awful”
Jessica Alba isn’t exactly what you’d call a ‘critical darling’; her movies rarely trouble the upper echelons of Rotten Tomatoes, and she’s been nominated by the Razzies over 100 times more than she has at the Oscars.
OK, that’s only true because she’s never been nominated for an Oscar, but still, even with all this working against her, she can still pull it out of the bag sometimes, and her work with Robert Rodriguez usually turns out pretty well, and even 20 years later, one of her most famous roles as Susan Storm/The Invisible Woman.
As part of the first group to play The Fantastic Four on the big screen. apart from that weird unreleased version from the 1990s, she immortalised herself in the world of comic book movies. While some people aren’t super keen on the film or its sequel, they’re a fun reminder of what superhero films used to be before the MCU came along and regenerated the entire genre, and fight me but Rise of the Silver Surfer also has one of Stan Lee’s best-ever cameos.
Unfortunately for Alba, one memory in particular continues to haunt her, and speaking about it at the Red Sea Film Festival in 2025, she recalled the infamous ‘naked scene’ from the first film. Her character is forced to strip to maintain her invisibility, only for the effect to wear off, exposing her to God and everyone.
“I thought that was awful,” she said of the moment (via Variety), “It was very humiliating in real life. I grew up with a pretty conservative family, and I am a pretty modest person. I dreaded that scene for weeks.”
This wasn’t the only time Alba was left unimpressed by a lack of clothing, as she’s also spoken about how much she hated making Into the Blue, a deep-sea bomb adventure that has her in a bikini for most of the runtime.
Alba was one of the most preeminent sex symbols of the mid-noughties, a bedroom must-have for randy teenagers all over the world, so studios and directors knew exactly what they were doing when they greenlit scenes like this, which might sound cynical, but this was the noughties: like the nineties on steroids.
Despite her embarrassment, she still looks back fondly on her time with Susan, calling her a “woman I looked up to”, which might sound ridiculous given what you’ve just heard, but remember where female superheroes were at during this period. There was almost zero representation of comic book women during this period: there was the Elektra solo movie, but that was so bad it nearly killed Jennifer Garner’s career, and with the exception of Jean Grey in the X-Men movies, Susan Storm was a rare glimmer of hope, which is what makes moments like the naked scene so disheartening.
With Marvel’s first family making their big-screen comeback in 2025, there’s every chance we could see Alba return to the world of super-cinema. Chris Evans got his flame back on in Deadpool & Wolverine, so why not her? If she is asked back, hopefully they treat her with the respect she deserves this time around.
