Jessica Alba: I Was Told I Wasn't "Caucasian Enough to Play the Leading Lady"

Jessica Alba is one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, but at the start of her career, she had trouble finding roles. "They couldn't figure out my ethnicity. I would always go out for 'exotic,'" said Jessica, whose father is Mexican-American. "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."

The entrepreneur and mother of two wasn't sure how to tackle being categorized in that manner. "That was kind of a weird thing to wrestle with, because I never had to look at myself that way or stick myself in a bucket. So I was more determined to be a leading lady to show that girls can look like me, and we can be leading ladies," Jessica said.

Jessica started The Honest Company in 2011 and broke into skin care and cosmetics in 2015 with Honest Beauty, which stemmed from not being able to find cosmetics that suited her skin tone growing up. "The philosophy around starting this beauty line is about enhancing who you are instead of cover up and turn you into somebody else," Jessica said. "I didn't feel like, when I was younger, that there were a lot of things offered to women of color. I found it really difficult to find even a foundation that had the right mix of yellow undertones and a little bit of pink . . . I'm definitely a blend of the two. I would have makeup artists constantly talk to me about how hard it was to match my skin tone."

The Honest Company is valued at $1.7 billion and is, reportedly, in talks to sell.

Watch the video to learn more about Jessica's beauty philosophy, then watch part two of this interview in where Jessica discusses how Latinas are a force to be reckoned with at the box office, and be sure to subscribe to POPSUGAR Girls' Guide on Youtube for new episodes of Pretty Unfiltered each Wednesday.