Jessica Alba is speaking up about why she stopped acting while she was at the top of her game. The actress and businesswoman credits her career shift to a change in mentality she had after the birth of her daughter Honor in 2008.

“My mother had cancer at a really young age, in her early 20s. I grew up with chronic illness. I had five surgeries before I was 11 years old. I had chronic allergies, and I was hospitalized a lot as a child,” she said in an interview with Romper. “I had this real moment of, I want to live, and thrive, and spend as much time with this little person that I’m bringing into the world as possible and stay. So, my health matters. I want this little person to be healthy. And it’s really freaking hard to be happy when you don’t have your health.”

Alba admitted in the interview that the shift in focus happened at a time when she was at the ‘top’ of her career after years of hard work, but it didn’t influence her decision.

“That’s really what motivated me. My motivation was not like, ‘Am I ever going to get hired again?’ Frankly, I was at the top of my career,” adds Alba, who is also the mother of two children, Haven, 9, and Hayes, 3. “I couldn’t go back to what I was doing before and be authentic. I just couldn’t. I didn’t care about it the same way.”

She also stated that being a mother inspired her to aim for “something bigger.”

She went on to say that if she was going to have the platform, she wanted to know what she could do with it that would be “meaningful” and “make a difference” When she became a mother for the first time, she stated that reality hit her like a ton of bricks. Jessica is well-known for her performances in television shows including Flipper and Dark Angel. Sin City, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Into the Blue, and many others.

Rather of focusing on her acting career, Alba decided to start her own company, The Honest Company, in 2012. The company focuses on eco-friendly, chemical-free infant goods, among other things. Getting the company up and going, however, was no simple task for the former Dark Angel actor.

“Building a brand and building a business is f**king impossible. And to be good at it and for it to thrive and scale, it is really hard. If anything, I was like, ‘Do I really want to do this?’” she recalls. “It took me three-and-a-half years just to find partners to even join me, and I got lots of rejection. I had to learn how to build decks. In every stage, I’m trying to get better and better as a business person, but it’s a totally different skill set than just taking your influence and fame and putting your name on a package and doing a press tour, picking out a couple designs.”

Despite her foray into the health business, Alba has continued to work on a number of films and roles, albeit on a much more rare basis, most recently joining the cast of the TV show L.A.’s Finest, where she plays one half of an LAPD power pair alongside Gabrielle Union.