By the time of her first year as a teenager, Jessica Alba had already appeared on the silver screen. Two decades later, she's a Golden Globe-nominated actress who's ranked as one of People's most beautiful and was honored with the number one spot on Maxim's Hot 100 list.
However, the Honest Company creator admits she was far less thrilled about the physical accolades she garnered as a starlet in Hollywood.
"My sexuality made me very uncomfortable," she said in the July issue of InStyle. "I remember my first Maxim shoot, they were telling me to pose a certain way, and I was like, 'Agh! I'm 19. I'm a virgin. I don't even know how to do that.' It was so awkward."
With sultry roles in Dark Angel, Sin City and Into the Blue, Alba quickly became known as the screen siren of the action genre. However, she didn't identify with the image that had been shaped of her by the time she reached just 25 years old.
"I sort of went through a life crisis. I was like, 'This isn't what I set out to be. I'm so much more than this, but I don't know how not to be a sex symbol.'"
The pre-Hollywood Alba was a cargo pants-wearing tomboy raised in a Catholic household. "The first time I wore a dress and heels, I had to go to the Golden Globes," she admitted to the magazine.
The California native's childhood was a far cry from the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood as she rotated in and out of the hospital with pneumonia, a burst appendix and asthma among other ailments.
"I was definitely born different," she said. "I loved to challenge authority. I was a very difficult child to parent. I was hyper. I didn't sleep a lot. And being sick so often and being in and out of the hospital so much made it hard to form relationships."
Having established herself as a bonafide movie star, mogul, wife and a mother to two daughters, the actress has come a long way from her lonely elementary school days. While she's still running her billion dollar business, Alba is returning to the genre that shaped her career, but as the kind of character the self-proclaimed feminist is eager to play.
"She can hold her own, and she's tough, and she kicks ass," she said of her role as Gina in the upcoming Mechanic: Resurrection. "So that's why I wanted to do it."
The July issue of InStyle hits newsstands on Friday, June 10.