Jessica Alba has a new movie coming out, but she can’t help but be preoccupied with her new upcoming role — as a first-time, real-life mother.
“I’ve always loved kids and I’ve always wanted kids,” Alba told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer during an interview Monday. “It’s kind of perfect.”
Alba, 26, is promoting her new film, “The Eye,” which arrives in theaters on Friday. She first gained notoriety on the Fox series “Dark Angel.” During the show’s run from 2000-02, Alba acknowledged an eating disorder and being self-conscious about her body image.
But as her movie career has evolved, Alba has learned to downplay the importance of her frequent appearances in magazine polls tallying the most desirable women in the world.
And that certainly isn’t changing with her upcoming parenthood.
“You definitely have to go with the flow,” said Alba, who is due in late spring. “You definitely have to surrender. But it’s a shock to a system. Again, I’ve never been one to emphasize anything on my looks or anything. It was just the polls, the magazines, they do it. It was never my thing. So I really don’t care.”
In “The Eye,” a supernatural thriller, Alba plays a blind concert violinist who regains her vision, only to find she’s unable to determine whether the frightening images she sees are real or imagined.
She told Lauer that her character, Sydney Wells, finds that regaining vision is “kind of a bad thing.”
“She ended up being much happier and much more independent when she was blind,” Alba added. “When she becomes sighted is when her world sort of falls apart.”
This is Alba’s first foray into the horror film genre and she is proud of the film’s reliance on suspense, rather than gore.
“I love horror movies,” she said. “I love psychological thrillers. I love the fact nobody is being mutilated. Thirteen-year-olds can go and watch this movie. It’s a good, classic ghost story.”
Alba, whose film credits include “Sin City,” “Fantastic Four” and “Good Luck Chuck,” said she trained on the violin for six months to add to the film’s realism. But she acknowledged viewers won’t be able to actually hear her play.
“I’m playing, but it sounded different,” Alba laughed. “It sounded really, really bad. But I played the notes and the rhythm of the song.”
The role of her lifeAlba told Lauer she wasn’t sure if becoming a mother would change the roles she chooses, but was looking to go “more indie” and seeking more “character-driven stuff.”
As for marriage plans with fiancé Cash Warren, Alba coyly said “Ummm ... I’ve thought about it.”
But in the meantime, she is over her “all-day sickness,” anticipating a “nice little break” and looking forward to being a mother.