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          I hear the screams of what terms out to be Honor, her three-year-old IMPLORING ‘Mummy, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.’ Alba is unfazed.
She is on so many lists as the world’s most beautiful, the world’s most sexy. One girl even had surgery to look like her so her boyfriend wouldn’t end the relationship.
Giant hazelnut eyes, an open unblemished face, lustrous healthy hair scooped back, her lips are naturally the size of pillows. She is wearing Givenchy strappy sandals, golden skin, and black dress that reveals her neat perfect baby bump. As we speak she is eight and a bit months pregnant.
I comment on how she manages to look gorgeous at such a time. She looks at me warily. Most interviews end up being about her body. It irks her. In fact an American glossy magazine recently featured her on the cover bemoaning that she would never get her pre-baby body back. “It sounds like I brought it up like that. Id didn’t. In fact I’m much happier with my body than I’ve ever been. It’s different, but it’s fine. I had a different association with my body and what perfection was when I was younger. And now that I’ve had my daughter and this next one (she won’t say if it’s a boy or girl) it’s like we’re built to have babies, and that’s cool.
“My body’s different and I’m different mentally. I’m owning it. I don’t know why people think it’s bad that my body’s not the same as it was before. I don’t want it to be the same.”
Her pre-baby body was a feature that catapulted her to fame in Sin City and bikini clad in Into The Blue. She worked on a prodigious number of movies over the last decade. Not all of them good. And was voted a Razzie award for worst actress in 2007 for her performances that year in Awake, Good Luck Chuck, and Fantastic Four.
Talking to her for a couple of hours makes me realise how unfazed she would have been by that. She cares very little for what other people think of her and has this extraordinary ability to live in her own world of focus, determination and mantra.
She confirms she does not want her pre-baby back. “I don’t care to be 105lbs. I was tiny. I’m 5’7”. I never said I wanted that body back.”
Wait a minute. 105lbs That’s verging on the skeletal. Why was that? Softly: “I was working a lot. They would say you have 15minutes to eat and I would graze. A 30 minute break for lunch meant 15 minutes of touch-ups. When do you have time to eat? I was stressed. I don’t like to eat when I’m stressed.”
Did she feel pressured to stay that size? “I wasn’t worried about being one way or another. I prefer not being super stressed out. I was still not the smallest girl. There are still actresses that are smaller than me. I was considered kind of big. The camera puts 10 to 15lbs on you. So if you are 130lbs and 5’7”, on screen you will seem like a bigger girl. You can obsess about that. It’s not going to make you a better actress.”
How did she lose her baby weight? “It took a long time, about a year. I tried not to eat processed foods. It wasn’t until I got a job that I needed to work out for that the last 20lbs came off. It was horrible. I don’t recommend it. It was a money job, an endorsement. You have to make a living. I feel better about doing jobs knowing that I will hopefully have the opportunity to do more stuff that’s creative and fulfilling.”
Becoming a mother though has changed her focus entirely about what roles she does. She plays a mum who is also a spy in Spy Kids 4 and manages to make it relevant to her.
“My priorities and how I approach the business has quite changed. Before I was about doing as much as humanly possible and basically not turning down a whole lot. I was hustling. Now it’s about: Do I love this character? Is it a great script? Who is the film maker? Am I going to grow and learn?”
And before? “I was about Will this keep me globally relevant? My first job was when Honor was four months old, so it was an adjustment. We all go through struggles, is it worth it? How much time am I going to spend away? How do I maintain and hold on to my own identity? My character in Spy Kids gives up work to be a full-time mum. She’s not great at it until she embraces work again.”
She’s a very serious and worthy mum. Didn’t she want to just make that her identity? “No. I think the thirties (she’s recently turned 30) are going to be good for parts for women, and the forties and fifties. There aren’t many roles for women in their twenties that are complicated and dynamic. I feel you can get into meatier stuff when you are going through big monumental life changes.”
She certainly doesn’t worry about not being the token babe. “I honestly never think about my looks unless I’m being interviewed and have to talk about it.” I believe her. For a start she has nothing to worry about. And there’s something about her which seems very much in her own world.
Her father, who is second generation Mexican American and spoke no Spanish, was in the Air Force. They moved bases every couple of years until he left to go into real estate.
“Being uprooted was difficult. I was isolated when I was a kid. I didn’t have many friends. All the moving around meant I was close to my family. I also had asthma, kidney and appendix problems. I was with adults a lot.”
Did she want to stand out or blend in? “I didn’t care. I was a bit of a narcissist. I didn’t seek attention, but I also didn’t care to be a follower. I was indifferent to the social pressures of my peer group.”
She started acting as a child, but her first role was in James Cameron’s TV series Dark Angel. I get the idea that she is not a woman who is used to being said no to. She wouldn’t allow it. “I think women can have it all. But there’s a pressure. You are not just bringing home the bacon, you’re cooking it, looking after your kids, having sex with your husband, and trying to kick ass at your job. I haven’t given up anything, I’ve just cut myself some slack. I’m not going to be the best at everything.”
I imagine that was quite hard for her to do. She grew up Catholic but became a born again Christian when she was 12. “I did that until I was 16 but I didn’t believe in the core philosophies they were teaching in church. I had friends that were gay and had friends that had sex before they were married and I didn’t think they were going to hell. I do believe in God.”
Does she think we’ve been here before? “I’m not closed to that possibility. I definitely felt like I knew my husband when I met him.”
Her husband is Cash Warren, son of Michael Warren, Hill Street Blues actor. They met while making Fantastic Four in 2004 where he was working in production. They married in 2008. It was an instant comfort when I met him. I felt like we were family. I wasn’t thinking of him romantically at first. It was just like I knew him my whole life.”
So you were friends first? “Yes, but only for ten days. we were both dating someone else. So we just hung out at first. And then we started hanging out differently.” She smiles and it’s a proper warm smile.
“I have a fondness for Vancouver because we lived in a bubble there before our friends and our families came back into our life. It’s nice to meet someone on location, bring them into your life. He had his thing, I had mine. It was maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, we’ll see.”
Was she ready to start a family? “No, it just happened and we were like OK, let’s do this. You go through the most profound things that human beings can experience. It’s made our bond deeper. It’s creating a life that you created with someone else that makes everything more solid. He is super involved.”
She arches back a little in her stiff chair. She thinks she could give birth any time. She’s very anti C-section. “I'm having a baby. There’s no emergency. There are times when it was painful, for sure. But women have been giving birth since the beginning of time, so why all of a sudden do we need medical intervention? It makes a doctor’s life easy and benefits the insurance companies. More money and the anaesthetists benefit. A natural birth takes a lot more time. When it’s a scheduled C they know exactly how long it will take. Labour is unpredictable.”
She has a tattoo on her wrist of some writing in Sanskrit. “It says padma, which means lotus – the manifestation of spiritual beauty.” How interesting that someone so physically beautiful would be all about spiritual beauty. What’s up for her next.
“I love my work, but it’s not my be all and end all. I’m working with writers on a couple of projects I’m trying to develop. One of them is a TV script. I’m looking forward to the next phase. I haven’t done any action movies and I’m one of the few women that can really do my own stunts.”
So having babies hasn’t made her cautious? Isn’t she a little afraid? “I was trained and I really enjoyed it.” Is she afraid of anything? “Psychos, sharks, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, not being a good parent… but I try not to harp on about things that don’t serve me.”