Jessica Alba Says She Got the "Rachel" Cut Before Rachel Did
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Before Chris McMillan gave Rachel Green her signature layered 'do, he had a practice run on Jessica Alba. In a new interview with Women's Health, Alba explained that she got the now-iconic cut when she was a pre-teen and that even back then, she knew it was something special.
She got the cut for an audition, she said, which happened to include another famous name: Milla Jovovich.
"My first real haircut was when Chris McMillan cut my hair. I was 12, almost 13," Alba said. "It was after I met him for an audition for Milla Jovovich's music video to play a younger Milla Jovovich."
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Alba said that McMillan gave her "massive" layers before Jennifer Aniston and her Friends character had the most famous haircut of the '90s. Of course, Alba loved the style and knew right away that she had something special.
"Chris McMillan gave me the Friends cut, and I got home and my hair was like to here and had those massive layers," Alba continued. "I was dying, I was like, 'Oh my god, this is so amazing,' I loved it so much."
However, the cut wasn't universally beloved. Alba's father, Mark, was an early naysayer, even going as far as punishing his daughter for getting her hair cut. It wasn't for nothing, though. While Alba didn't mention the Milla music video, she said that the style got her plenty of work.
"My dad was like, 'You're grounded. I didn't tell you you could cut your hair,'" Alba said of his reaction. "Like, 'Mom was with me, mom let me do it. This is for work.' I blamed it on being for work, meanwhile, I was like, 'Cut it off, please.' And then Chris McMillan became the biggest thing ever, and I was one of the first to get that Friends cut. And it got me a lot of catalog work."
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Aniston had a similar reaction to Alba's when she got the cut herself, though she says it wasn't the easiest to style after McMillan worked his magic.
"I got that haircut and was like, 'Wow this is amazing,' and then I was totally left with this frizzy mop on my head, because I had no idea how to do what he did," she said when she presented him with the Hairstylist of the Year Award at the 2018 InStyle Awards. "Nobody seems to know how to do what Chris does. And I figured out that's called creating job security."
