Jessica Alba Praises Husband Cash Warren for Dating Her When Her Life Was ‘in a Fish Bowl’ (Exclusive)

Nearly 20 years later, Jessica Alba is reflecting on her first red carpet alongside Cash Warren with some shock at her former self. 

As part of her ET rETrospective sit-down, the longtime Hollywood star revisited the day she stepped out at the Los Angeles premiere of Sin City in 2005. At the time, she was joined by her then-boyfriend, Warren. While it was not the first event she attended with her future husband — they were side by side at a party to celebrate her April 2005 cover of GQ a week earlier — the premiere marked their official red carpet debut and Alba made quite the declaration in an interview with ET at the time. 

“Oh gosh — Was that the first red carpet that I brought Cash to? Oh my god, I said — I even said ‘love of my life,'” she acknowledges, reacting to her 19-year-old interview comments. “Whoa, nine months and I declare that he’s the love of my life! What the hell was I thinking?”

Judging by their ongoing 16-year marriage, Alba was, in retrospect, not wrong about giving him the esteemed label all those years ago. And, as she reflected on that time in her life, Warren would continue to prove he was the man for her. 

“It’s interesting having someone who was not in entertainment at all, having to deal with so much of our life being kind of like in a fish bowl,” she says. “At the time, the tabloids were like on fire and we didn’t really have social media, so we couldn’t control our own narratives, so we were so exposed to how journalists wanted to portray us.”

While Warren was not entirely a stranger to the industry — he was working as a director’s assistant for her film, Fantastic Four — the attention on him was certainly amplified as he dated one of Hollywood’s well-known leading ladies.

“I have to say he’s, like, had a lot of patience to deal with that. And I think it would have definitely broken up a lot of relation– any other, you have to be a certain kind of person to be able to handle it,” she points out, “and he handled it really well considering. I mean, most people in my shoes, you know, they can’t handle it, more or less someone who was like, I didn’t even want this, ask for this.”

Nearly two decades of marriage later, the pair is still going strong as husband and wife and parents to daughters Honor, 16, and Haven, 12, and son Hayes, 6. Meanwhile, Alba has continued to act while also running her Honest Company. In April, she announced she was stepping down as 
Chief Creative Officer, though she will remain on the board. This year, she also launched her Lady Spitfire production company, through which she has executive produced her next film, Netflix’s Trigger Warning. 

“I really was like, OK, I want to do an action movie, but I really want the sort of feminine version of what it is to be in an action movie like this,” she tells ET. “I wanted it to be gritty. I wanted it to be raw. I wanted hand-to-hand combat. I would say the toughest people I know are women. We can juggle so many things and we could also, like, create life and give birth and raise kids and do all the stuff.”

And, as evidenced by daughter Honor’s recent interests, she’s leading by example in real life. 

“My daughter, my oldest — she loves to write, she loves to edit, she loves to direct and so, she’s done a couple of short films already and, you know, it’s neat to see her want to be behind the scenes, behind the camera and telling stories,” Alba says. “It’s really cool.”

Trigger Warning premieres June 21 on Netflix. 

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