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Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba at the 2007 Scream Awards
Born	Jessica Marie Alba April 28, 1981 (1981-04-28) (age 27) Pomona, California, United States
Years active	1994–present
Spouse(s)	Cash Warren
Awards won Other Awards Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) 2000 Dark Angel Teen Choice Awards: Choice Actress 2001 Dark Angel ALMA Awards: Breakthrough Actress of the Year 2001 DVD Exclusive Awards: Best Actress in a DVD Premiere Movie 2003 The Sleeping Dictionary MTV Music Awards: Sexiest Performance 2006 Sin City Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards: Sexiest Jessica 2007 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Actress 2008 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981)^[1] is an American television and film actress.

Alba began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba rose to prominence with the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), then expanding her résumé to film, predominantly within the confines of action and comedy.^[2][3] 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 (2007) and Good Luck Chuck of the same year.^[4][5]

Alba appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim and was voted AskMen.com's number one on their list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" by FHM in 2007.^[6][7][8] She also appeared on the cover of Playboy, which was followed by a lawsuit that was later dropped.^[9] Alba has won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) for her acting in the series Dark Angel.^[10]

Early life

Alba was born in Pomona, California^[1] to Catherine Alba (née Jensen) and Mark Alba. Her mother is of Danish and French Canadian descent and her father of Mexican American descent (though both his parents were born in California).^[11][12] She has a younger brother Joshua. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, and 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.^[3][12]

Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, a ruptured appendix, and a cyst on her tonsils. This isolated her from other children at school because she was in the hospital so often that no one knew her well enough to befriend her.^[13] She has also acknowledged suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder during childhood.^[14][15] Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California. She graduated from high school at age 16,^[16] and subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.^[17]

Career

Alba had expressed interest in acting since the age of five. She took her first acting class at age twelve. An acting agent signed her nine months later.^[18][3]

In Edmonton during the filming of Good Luck Chuck, August 2006

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.^[2]

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.^[3] She then performed the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the television series Flipper.^[2][3] 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.^[19][3]

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..^[2] 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.^[17][20]

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.^[5]

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.^[21][5]

During preparation for Dark Angel, in which Alba trained for three hours every day, the actress began to starve herself and became obsessed with exercise, going on to say, "A lot of girls have eating disorders and I did too. I got obsessed with it." Alba recalls coming to a realization that she had a problem when she dropped to just 100 lb and cites her natural introduction to puberty and her development of womanly curves as two things that caused her "concern" regarding her aesthetics. Alba, who also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, says she has been cooking for herself since the age of twelve, in fear she will end up as fat as her family members.^[22]

Alba's most notable film roles have included 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, 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.^[23][4][24] 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.^[25]

In 2008, Alba appeared in her first horror-film role in The Eye, a remake of the Hong Kong original.^[12] In February, she hosted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's Science and Technical Awards.^[26] Later in the year, she starred in The Love Guru.^[4]

Alba has been represented by talent agent, Patrick Whitesell.^[27]

Public image

Cover of the March 2006 issue of Playboy magazine. Alba objected to being on the cover of the magazine and filed suit, but later dropped the action.

In 2006, readers of Askmen.com voted Alba No. 1 on 99 Most Desirable Women,^[7] while in 2007, Maxim Magazine placed Alba on the number 2 spot of their "Top 100", after Lindsay Lohan.^[8] Both GQ and In Style had Alba on their June covers,^[28][29] and in May, after eight million votes, FHM (UK and USA editions) named Alba the winner as "2007’s Sexiest Woman in the World".^[6] Alba continues to be regarded as one of the world's most attractive women, being named to Maxim's Hot 100 in 2008.

Alba has received successful public reception 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.^[8][30][10]

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.^[31]

On the cover of the March 2006 issue, Playboy magazine named Alba among its 25 Sexiest Celebrities, and the Sex Star of the Year. 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.^[9]

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.^[32]

Personal life

Alba was raised as a Roman Catholic and still considers herself "spiritual".^[33] In her adolescence, she became a born-again Christian,^[34] but left the church after four years because she felt she was being judged for her appearance, explaining:

Alba also had objections to the church's condemnations of premarital sex and homosexuality, and the lack of strong female role models in the Bible, explaining "I thought it was a nice guide, but it certainly wasn't how I was going to live my life."^[35] However, she has stated that she still holds her belief in God despite leaving the church.^[36]

As the daughter of religiously 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."^[37]

Alba was given the option to appear nude 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".^[35]

Alba at the Fantastic Four premiere in London 2007

While filming Dark Angel, Alba began a four year romance with fellow castmate Michael Weatherly, which caused controversy due to their 12 year age gap.^[38] He proposed to her on her twentieth birthday.^[12] They eventually broke up after a four-year relationship. In July 2007, Jessica spoke out about the break up. "I don't know [why I got engaged]. I was a virgin. He was 12 years older than me. I thought he knew better. My parents weren't happy. They're really religious. They believe God wouldn't allow the Bible to be written if it wasn't what they are supposed to believe. I'm completely different."^[39]

Alba had at one time said she envisioned 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."^[40] 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".^[41]

Alba met Cash Warren, son of actor Michael Warren, while making Fantastic Four in 2004.^[42][43] Alba married Warren in Los Angeles on Monday, May 19, 2008.^[44][45] On June 7, 2008, Alba gave birth to a baby girl, Honor Marie Warren,^[46] at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.^[47] The first pictures of Honor Marie appeared in OK! magazine, which paid a reported $1.5 million for them.^[48]

Alba's charity work includes participation with Clothes Off Our Back, Habitat for Humanity, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Project HOME, RADD, Revlon Run/Walk for Women, SOS Children Villages, Soles4Souls, and Step up.^[49] Alba supports Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. elections.^[50]

Filmography

Films

Television

Awards and nominations

Alba receiving an award at the Spike TV Awards

ALMA Awards

• Won: Breakthrough Actress of the Year (2001)

TV Land Awards

• Nominated: Little Screen/Big Screen Star (Women) (2007)

Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards

• Won: Hottest Jessica (2007)

Young Hollywood Awards

• Won: Superstar of Tomorrow (2005)

Kids Choice Awards

• Won: Best Movie Actress for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as Susan Storm (2008)

Premios Juventud

• Nominated: "Actríz que se roba la pantalla" for: Awake, Good Luck Chuck, Fantastic Four and The Eye (2008)^[51]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Jessica Alba

• Jessica Alba at the Internet Movie Database
• Jessica Alba at Allmovie
• Jessica Alba at People.com
• Jessica Alba at Yahoo! Movies