Jessica Alba

Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American television and film actress. She began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba rose to prominence as the lead actress in the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002). Alba later appeared in various films including Honey (2003), Sin City (2005), Fantastic Four (2005), Into the Blue (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Good Luck Chuck both in 2007.

Alba is considered a sex symbol and often generates media attention for her looks. She appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim and was voted number one on AskMen.com's list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" by FHM in 2007. The use of her image on the cover of the March 2006 Playboy sparked a lawsuit by her, which was later dropped. She has also won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV), and a Golden Globe nomination for her lead role in the television series Dark Angel.


Early life

Alba was born in Pomona, California to Catherine Alba (née Jensen) and Mark Alba. Her mother is of Danish and French Canadian descent and her father is Mexican American, though both of his parents were born in California (on the December 1, 2009 episode of Lopez Tonight, George Lopez announced that a DNA test showed Alba to be 87% European and 13% Indigenous American). She has a younger brother, Joshua. Her father's Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas before settling back in California when she was nine years old. Alba described her family as being a "very conservative family—a traditional, Catholic, Latin American family" and herself as very liberal; she says she had identified herself as a "feminist" as early as age five.

Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies. During childhood, she suffered from collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, as well as a ruptured appendix and a tonsillar cyst.Alba became isolated from other children at school, because she was in the hospital so often due to her illnesses that no one knew her well enough to befriend her. Alba has also had asthma since she was a child. Alba has said that her family's frequent moving also contributed to her isolation from her peers. She has also acknowledged that she has suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder during her childhood. Alba graduated from high school at age 16, and she subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.


Career
Smiling young woman in strapless white dress, holding a microphone.
Alba at the 2008 Paris premiere for The Eye.

Alba expressed interest in acting since the age of five. In 1992, the 11-year-old Alba persuaded her mother to take her to an acting competition in Beverly Hills, California whose grand prize was free acting classes. Alba won the grand prize, and took her first acting lessons. An agent signed Alba nine months later. Her first appearance on film was a small role in the 1994 feature Camp Nowhere as Gail. She was originally hired for two weeks but her role turned into a two-month job in a leading role when one of the prominent actresses dropped out.

Alba appeared in two national television commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney as a child. She was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into television in 1994 with a recurring role as the vain Jessica in three episodes of the Nickelodeon comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack. She then performed the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the television series Flipper. Under the tutelage of her lifeguard mother, Alba learned to swim before she could walk, and she was a PADI-certified scuba diver, skills which were put to use on the show, which was filmed in Australia.

In 1998, she appeared as Melissa Hauer in a first-season episode of the Steven Bochco crime-drama Brooklyn South, as Leanne in two episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210, and as Layla in an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave. In 1999, she appeared in the Randy Quaid comedy feature P.U.N.K.S.. After Alba graduated from high school, she studied acting with William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, at the Atlantic Theater Company, which was developed by Macy and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film director, David Mamet.

Alba rose to greater prominence in Hollywood in 1999 after appearing as a member of a snobby high school clique in the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed, and as the female lead in the 1999 comedy-horror film Idle Hands, opposite Devon Sawa.

Her big break came when writer/director James Cameron picked Alba from a pool of 1,200 candidates for the role of the genetically-engineered super-soldier, Max Guevara, on the Fox sci-fi television series Dark Angel. Co-created by Cameron, the series starred Alba, and ran for two seasons until 2002, earning her critical acclaim as well as a Golden Globe nomination. Alba later revealed that she had suffered from an eating disorder while in preparation for Dark Angel.
Blond woman having make-up applied on a movie set, surrounded by busy people.
Alba on the set of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Alba has been well-received in popular culture. She received the Teen Choice Award for Choice Actress and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) for her role in Dark Angel. She has frequently appeared on Maxim's Hot 100 list. In 2006, Alba received an MTV Movie Award for "Sexiest Performance" for Sin City. Her acting has also drawn criticism, however, as she was nominated for a 2007 Razzie Award for Worst Actress for her performances in Awake, Good Luck Chuck, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. She was also nominated for the same award in 2005 for her performances in Fantastic Four and Into the Blue.

Alba's most notable film roles have included an aspiring dancer-choreographer in Honey, exotic dancer Nancy Callahan in Sin City, and as the Marvel Comics character Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four, of which movie critic Mick LaSalle said that her performance while talking for long periods of time was on "shaky ground". She then appeared in its sequel, in Into the Blue later that year, and Good Luck Chuck a few years later. Alba went on to host the 2006 MTV Movie Awards and performed sketches spoofing the movies King Kong, Mission: Impossible 3, and The Da Vinci Code. In February, she hosted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science and Technical Awards. Alba has been represented by talent agents Patrick Whitesell and Brad Cafarelli.

In 2008, Alba made her acting transition to the horror-film genre in The Eye, a remake of the Hong Kong original. The film was released on February 1, 2008. Though the film was not well received by critics,Alba's performance was both positively and negatively received. Alba won a Teen Choice for Choice Movie Actress: Horror/Thriller and a Razzie Award for Worst Actress-nomination. Also in 2008, Alba starred alongside Mike Myers and Justin Timberlake in "box office bomb" The Love Guru. Both the film and Alba's performance were panned by critics. Alba was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actress.

In late 2008, Alba signed on to star as the lead role in An Invisible Sign of My Own. The movie finished filming in November, 2008. The film is in post-production and set to be released in 2010. Ugly Betty star America Ferrera was originally set to star as the lead but had to pull out due to filming commitments with her television show Ugly Betty.

Alba starred alongside Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck in the film adaption of the book of the same name, The Killer Inside Me. In the movie, Alba played Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute.The film is set to be released in 2010. Also in 2010, Alba starred in the romantic comedy Valentine's Day, alongside Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Biel, Emma Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, and Jennifer Garner. The film was released on February 12, 2010.