Early life
Jessica Alba was born in Pomona, California to Mark Alba (who is of Mexican descent), and Cathy Jensen (who has French and Danish ancestry). Her maternal grandfather was a Marine noncom for 30 years, serving in the Pacific during WWII, and later as Asst. Drum Major for the United States Marine Band. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, along with her brother, Joshua Alba, and her grandparents until she was 17 years old. Her father's Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled back in California. Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4 to 5 times a year, a burst appendix, a cyst on her tonsils, and asthma.[citation needed] She has also acknowledged suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder during childhood.
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.[citation needed] Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California.[citation needed]
Alba had expressed interest in acting since the age of five. She took her first acting class at age twelve, and an acting agent signed her nine months later.[citation needed]
Career
Alba's 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 when the actress in one of the prominent roles dropped out.
Young Alba appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney; she was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as the insufferable young snob, 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 TV 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 graduating from high school, Alba 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 on the controversial cover of the March 2006 issue of Playboy magazine.
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 James D. Roberts and 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 TV series Dark Angel. Co-created by Cameron, Alba was the star in the series which ran for two seasons before being canceled in 2002. Since then her most notable roles have been as an aspiring dancer/choreographer in Honey, exotic dancer Nancy Callahan in Sin City and as the classic Marvel Comics character Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four. Jessica went on to host the MTV Movie Awards 2006 and performed sketches spoofing the movies King Kong, Mission Impossible 3, and The Da Vinci Code.
Playboy magazine named Alba among its 25 Sexiest Celebrities, and the Sex Star of the Year in its March 2006 issue, on whose cover she appeared. Alba was involved in litigation against Playboy for its use of her image (from a promotional shot for Into the Blue) without her consent, which she contends gave the appearance that she was featured in the issue in a "nude pictorial". However, she later dropped the lawsuit after receiving a personal apology from Playboy owner Hugh Hefner who agreed to make donations to two charities that Alba has supported.
Also, Maxim Magazine placed Jessica on the number 2 spot of their 100 hottest women in 2006.
Apparently, Alba fears being typecast as a sex kitten based on the bulk of parts offered to her. "Somehow, I don't think this is happening to Natalie Portman," laments Alba. In the interview, Alba says she wants to be taken seriously as an actress but believes she needs to do movies that she would otherwise not be interested in to build her career, stating that eventually she hopes to be more selective in her film projects.
Personal life
Alba was temporarily engaged to her Dark Angel co-star Michael Weatherly. In January 2005, she began dating Cash Warren, a director's assistant on Fantastic Four, whom she met during filming. Regarding children, Alba said, "I'm really girly when it comes to kids. I've been surrounded by kids my whole life because I'm the oldest of 15 cousins — I've been changing diapers since I was six. I want to have a couple, for sure".
In 2005, prior to the birth of her brother's child, Alba said she was starting a children's clothing line: "About four of my girlfriends have babies so they have no time for me. I figure if I can do baby clothes maybe they'll have more time to hang out!"
Alba has revealed that she envisions a much older man as her ideal partner, making references to Morgan Freeman, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, and Michael Caine. "I have this thing for older men. They've been around and know so much."[6]
She has said that she has no problem with one night stands, but that she no longer dates around.[7]
She has a tattoo of a daisy with a ladybird on the back of her neck, the Sanskrit symbol for lotus flower, "padma", on her wrist,[8] and a lower back tattoo of a bow.[9]
Her brother Joshua appeared with her in the first season finale episode of Dark Angel titled "And Jesus Brought a Casserole".
Religion
In her adolescence, Alba became a born-again Christian,[10] but left the church saying, "When older men would hit on me, my youth pastor said it was because I was wearing provocative clothing, when I wasn't. It just made me feel like if I was in any way desirable to the opposite sex that it was my fault, and it made me ashamed of my body and being a woman." She also disagrees with the church's condemnations of premarital sex and homosexuality, and was bothered by the lack of strong female role models in the Bible saying, "it certainly wasn't how I was going to live my life."
As the daughter of conservative parents, Alba, whose grandparents did not allow her to wear a bathing suit around the house, maintains a no-nudity clause in her contract, though she has claimed she had been open to the possibility of appearing nude in Sin City. She remarked of a GQ shoot in which she was scantily clad: "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".[citation needed]
Alba was given the option to appear naked by the film's directors, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez but declined the offer saying, "I don't do nudity. I just don't. Maybe that makes me a bad actress. Maybe I won't get hired in some things. But I have too much anxiety."
