Jessica Alba Interview
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The last time Horror.com caught up with Jessica Alba, we were on the set of her upcoming A-horror remake, The Eye. Finally, the movie is completed and coming out, and Ms. Alba is able to reveal more detail about the finished product.
In the film, Alba plays a blind violinist who gets a corneal transplant, and is able to see… dead people! Here's what she has to say about cinematic ghosts, and real ones.
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Staci Wilson / Horror.com: I'll admit I have not seen all of your movies, but this one seems to be the most mentally and physically stressful in terms of what the character goes through.
Jessica Alba: Yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself in any movie in that I do I try to do as much as I can, but yes, being in every scene [this was hard]. I certainly knew that I needed to completely be in my mind and my place in the movie. It should coincide with the director's vision for sure. It was important that we had a scene through the line and I think I want people to be able to see it. I want to really go on a journey, and really enjoyed the film for sure.
Q: Are you at all superstitious?
Jessica Alba: Sort of.
Q: What kind of things? Walking under ladders, or..?
Jessica Alba: Yeah, I don't walk under ladders. I'm OK with cracks on pavement. I'm okay with black cats. I'm not a big cat person, anyway. I don't like stray birds in the house. That's, like, a big one.
Q: That happens to you often? [laughter]
Jessica Alba: It just… like, it happened once and I lost my mind, because my grandma told me that there was going to be a death within a few days or something like that. If there's a stray bird in the house, and you know… it's just her superstition. And that just stays in my mind. So I don't like stray birds in the house.
Q: Do you believe in the supernatural, and like ghosts, and stuff like that?
Jessica Alba: I've seen the stuff that I could not explain. And no one else can really explain. And so… My parents had a house, one of their houses was haunted for sure, you know, like, all faucets turning on. Or all the doors in the house being wide open. When you come home, TVs being turned on and stuff like that.
Q: Didn't you have a brother, though? Are you sure he wasn't responsible for the 'ghostly happenings'?
Jessica Alba: No, we would come home, all of us, and all the faucets would be running and all of our doors would be opened in the house.
Q: It sounds scary; did that scare you?
Jessica Alba: Yeah, I didn't like that all so much.
Q: Your parents don't still live there today?
Jessica Alba: No. They moved to another place, but that was a creepy house. They it got blessed and it got fragrant sage and stuff because it was really not… it wasn't really okay, like literally, in the middle of the night. Every faucet in the house would turn on. How does that happen? And we would all wake up, and everything would shut off and then turn back on and you're like, 'What the hell is going on?'. It's not that fun.
Q: Let's talk about the movie… does it scare you at all?
Jessica Alba: Definitely, the state that you have to be in when you were shooting. You're always kind of looking over your shoulder. You're always kind of anticipating something not right happening. So I had quite a bit of dreams, I mean, I wasn't sure if it was just being in Albuquerque, because that sort of a native very spiritual land there. Or if it's just because I was in the state that I was in while we were shooting.
Q: The actors in the first one was really incredible. Angelica Lee did a great job. Had you seen the original prior to signing on, or have you seen it since?
Jessica Alba: Of course yeah, yeah.
Q: How do you think they compare for fans of horror that know the original?
Jessica Alba: We definitely pay homage to it. There are some scenes that are similar, you know, we wanted to not skew completely away from it. But we do have our own interpretation of something fresh and different. You know, ghosts are a little bit more part of the culture in Asia and it gets a little bit different in Western society. We don't accept them at all. It's like, [if you see them] you're crazy. You've completely lost your mind. There's no way, and so we had to kind of take on that mentality in dealing with my character and what she was saying.
Q: That's an interesting perspective. You're right, they are very much infused into the culture, and in Chinese and Japanese horror movies the characters aren't necessarily disbelieved.
Jessica Alba: Are there more. It's more accepted.
[end]
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