Actor Jessica Alba once felt she, Jennifer Lopez , and only a few other women of color could be seen as leading ladies in Hollywood. But she questioned if her fellow Latina star Eva Mendes belonged in that category. Jessica Alba blasted Hollywood for having too few women of color as leading ladies Alba wasn’t just satisfied with being an actor while pursuing work in the film industry, she wanted to be a leading lady as well.
But initially, she was told she didn’t have the traditional physical qualifications often seen in usual female leads. Because of her unique appearance at the time, she asserted that studio heads weren’t sure what kinds of roles suited her. “They couldn’t figure out my ethnicity,” Alba once said in an interview with Pop Sugar .
“They were like, ‘You’re not Latin enough to play a Latina, and you’re not Caucasian enough to play the leading lady, so you’re going to be the exotic one.’ Whatever that was.” But she admitted those responses only further encouraged her to achieve her dreams.
“That was kind of a weird thing to wrestle with because I never had to look at myself that way or had to stick myself in a bucket,” she added. “Then I was even more determined to become a leading lady to show that: Girls can look like me and we can be leading ladies.” Her persistence paid off, as Alba led many projects that became commercial and critical hits over time.
Although it only lasted two seasons, the television series Dark Angel show.