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Jessica Alba

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File:Sin City Jessica Alba poster.jpg
Jessica Alba in a promotional poster for the 2005 film, Sin City.

Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981 in Pomona, California, USA) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in movies such as Idle Hands and Never Been Kissed, and her starring role in the TV series Dark Angel. She got her first starring movie role in Honey, and went on to appear in prominent roles in Sin City and Fantastic Four.

Early life

Alba was born to a Mexican father of Spanish-Native American descent and French-Danish mother, raised in a military family, living with her parents, her brother Joshua, and her grandparents until she was sixteen. She grew up a sports fanatic and terrorized teachers and grandparents alike with her rebellious behavior. Her father's navy career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled back in California when Jessica was nine. Jessica's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies, as she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, and suffered a burst appendix, a cyst on her tonsils, asthma, anorexia, and a kidney infection. This served to isolate her from other children at school because, as she claims, she was in the hospital so often that no one knew her well enough to befriend her. Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California.

She had expressed interest in becoming an actress since the age of five, took her first acting class at age twelve, and was signed by an agent nine months later.

Jessica Alba on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Acting career

Jessica's first appearance in film was a small role in the 1994 feature Camp Nowhere, as Gail. She was originally hired for two weeks but her role soon turned into a two month job when the actress in one of the more prominent roles in the film dropped out, and Jessica was picked to replace her because her hair matched that of the original actress.

Jessica appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney, and later was featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as insufferable young snob Jessica in three episodes of the popular Nickelodeon comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack. She then won the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the TV series Flipper. The show was filmed in Australia, where her skills as an avid swimmer and PADI-certified scuba diver were put to good use. In 1995 she appeared in the film Venus Rising as Young Eve.

After graduating from high school at age sixteen, Jessica 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.

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..

Jessica rose to geater 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 may have been as the star of the popular Fox sci-fi TV series Dark Angel, which was co-created by writer/director James Cameron, who picked Jessica for the role from a pool of 1,200 candidates. The show ran for two seasons before being cancelled in 2002. Since then her most notable roles have been as an aspiring dancer/choreographer in Honey, the stripper Nancy Callahan in Sin City, and the classic Marvel Comics character Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four.

Alba's most serious award nomination to date is that of a Golden Globe for "Lead Actress in a Drama Series" during the first season of Dark Angel. She did not win.

She has stated that despite being an extremely ambitious actress who desires the level of fame enjoyed by stars like Tom Cruise, she once told James Cameron during filming on Dark Angel that she did not want to direct because it appeared to be too difficult an undertaking, but that he responded with the prediction that she would end up directing sooner than she expected.

Personal Life

Jessica was engaged to her Dark Angel co-star Michael Weatherly for a year. She later began dating Cash Warren, a director's assistant on Fantastic Four, whom she met when filming that movie.

She is a self-professed animal lover who although dislikes reptiles and rodents, owns two pugs named Sid and Nancy.

Religion

During an interview with GQ magazine, Jessica said that in her teen years she became a born-again Christian in rebellion against her liberal parents, but later abandoned this. She explained:

"One of the reasons why I chose not to be (a devout Christian) is because a lot of people gave me a lot of grief for just being a woman and made me feel ashamed for having a body because it tempted men. I didn't understand what that meant because I was like, 'God created this...' That was a hard time in my life." [1]

However, as the daughter of a conservative parents and grandparents, Alba maintains a no-nudity clause in her contract, though she has claimed she had been willing to be nude in Sin City. She remarked of the GQ shoot itself:

"They didn't want me to wear the granny panties but I said, 'If I'm gonna be topless I need to wear granny panties."

Trivia

  • Her brother Joshua appeared with her in "And Jesus Brought a Casserole," the first season finale of Dark Angel, in which he played Krit, one of her X-5 brothers who wanted to help destroy Manticore.
  • She has a tattoo of a daisy with a ladybug on it on the back of her neck.
  • According to an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, her measurements are 34-24-34. [2]

Filmography

Reference