When Jessica Alba offered to throw a party for her daughter Honor’s 16th birthday, she got rebuffed.
Alba, 43, told the story during her Monday, June 3, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, revealing that Honor is “officially driving” and will turn 16 “really soon” — Friday, June 7, to be exact.
“I was like, ‘[It’s] your 16th birthday, this is my moment to really shine as a party-thrower,’” Alba recalled. “And she’s like, ‘No, Mom, it’s so embarrassing.’”
In fact, Honor, 15, could not “think of anything worse.”
“I’m the best party-thrower in the world!” Alba recalled telling her.
“I just wanna, like, have dinner with my friends — like maybe 22 of them or something — and we’re just gonna play games,” Honor replied.
“Oh, my God, I have a game guy,” Alba said. “And we can, like, do stations. … We can do cutouts of you. And everyone can wear pajamas!” (Honor’s response: “Are you kidding me? Do you want me to, like, ever see my friends ever again?”)
Alba and husband Cash Warren share Honor and her two younger siblings, Haven, 12, and Hayes, 6. In April, Alba stepped down as the chief creative officer of The Honest Company, which she launched in 2012. She got the idea for the baby-safe product line in 2008 after she had an allergic reaction to laundry detergent while pregnant with Honor. The online-only shop opened four years later with only seven products for sale.
When host Jimmy Fallon asked her about leaving the Los Angeles–based company (now valued at $363 million), Alba said, “I feel like it’s my fourth baby and I sent my baby off to college. … It was hard, but I’m ready for kind of my next chapter.”
Alba is launching a comeback in acting, where she first found success as the star of the Fantastic Four superhero movies and the TV series Dark Angel.
Last month, Alba caught up with Us at the Monster Jam World Finals XXIII in L.A. With her three kids in tow, she spoke about returning to the silver screen after more than a decade focusing on her Honest brand.
“It’s been 12 years, so I think it’s time to get back into entertainment and also think about what else I want to create or do,” she told Us. “I have a movie actually coming out June 21 for Netflix called Trigger Warning. It’s an action movie and I executive-produced it. So, I’m excited.”
In Trigger Warning, she plays a Special Forces officer who takes over her grandfather’s bar after he dies; while back in her hometown, she butts heads with a local gang. Anthony Michael Hall costars and Mouly Surya directs.
“For me, I love action movies,” and doing stunts, Alba said on The Tonight Show, noting that she wanted “to have a grounded, cool, female-driven action movie.”
Trigger Warning counts many women in the crew and has “a lot of [female] heads of departments in a genre that’s pretty dominated by men,” she said, adding, “The most badass people I know are women — I mean, we give birth.”
