Jessica Alba

Keeping focus

Rather than burning out under the childhood spotlight , JESSICA ALBA stayed strong and continues to glow while doing what she loves

BY BRET LOVE

The rocky road from precocious child star to successful adult actor is a notoriously treacherous one. For every Natalie Portman-style success story, there’s a dozen River Phoenixes and Edward Furlongs, who burn out under the harsh glare of fame’s spotlight. So you have to respect Jessica Alba, who began her career at the ripe old age of 12, successfully avoided becoming another tabloid-exploited cliché, and emerged as one of Hollywood’s most popular sex symbols.

Born in 1981 to a Mexican father and a mother of French and Danish descent, Alba’s family moved around frequently during her father’s stint in the Air Force before settling in Southern California when she was nine. According to the 26-year-old actress, it was the impermanent existence of her early childhood that initially prepared her for the nomadic life of a movie star.

Jessica Alba stars in The Ten, an indie film inspired
by the Ten Commandments“I think it made it easier to be an actor, because you’re always moving around, having to adapt to different environments. I went to nine different schools before I was 12, and now it’s backfired because if I ever stay in one place for too long, I start to go nutty. I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s time to go!’” she laughs. “I had a hard time making friends as a kid because kids are so used to consistency, and I’m so inconsistent just because I’m not always around.”

Perhaps this explains why she was drawn to the escapist fantasies of her favorite childhood movies, including Flashdance, Fame and Dirty Dancing. It was during family trips to a Del Rio, Texas drive-in that the five-year-old first decided she wanted to become an actress—but it would be seven more years before she would make her first move toward realizing that dream.

“My family didn’t have the means [for me to take acting classes]. It was hard because we only had one income and one car,” she recalls. “I actually didn’t take any kind of professional training until I was 16, after I graduated high school.”

Of course, her family’s financial problems weren’t enough to preventthe determined young Alba frommaking her Hollywood dreams come true. In 1993, soon after landing her first agent, she was hired for a minor role in the Christopher Lloyd family film Camp Nowhere. But when a principal actress dropped out, director Jonathan Prince chose Alba to take over the part.

“It wasn’t like a big break,” Alba laughs. “The girl they originally had for the part got sick or something. They went into casting and matched my hair to hers. When I got the part, the director liked me and gave me a couple of lines, so I got my SAG card.”

Though it’s easy for her to dismiss the film’s importance to her career now, Camp Nowhere ultimately led to national ad campaigns for Nintendo and JC Penney, a supporting role on Nickelodeon’s “The Secret World of Alex Mack,” and a lead role in the 1995 revival of the classic TV series “Flipper.” From there it was on to small parts in teenfriendly films such as Never Been Kissed and Idle Hands, but it was her butt-kicking breakthrough role on James Cameron’s cult sci-fiseries “Dark Angel” that made Alba the object of a million boys’ fantasies.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Seattle, “Dark Angel” cast Alba as Max Guevera, a geneticallyenhanced superhuman who escaped from a military lab. The action-packed thriller achieved respectable ratings and attracted a die-hard cult following—especially among the Maxim and FHM crowd—but was cancelled after two seasons, reportedly due to huge production costs. According to Alba, the cast and crew were shocked when they heard news of the show’s unexpected demise. “[Cameron] had a really tough time with it. He was trying to explain, but he really couldn’t, because it was all political and had nothing to do with ratings or the fanbase. Our fans were very loyal, and they really missed the show. But luckily, the same day it got cancelled, the head of Universal called me about Honey, so I jumped right into doing that.”

Much like Camp Nowhere, the dance-heavy teen flick seemed eminently disposable upon its 2003 release, coming off as a hip-hop-influenced Flashdance update that had been watered down for mass consumption. But despite a paltry $17 million budget, the film brought in more than $30 million at the US box office, proving Alba’s fans
(who had voted her No. 1 on Maxim’s Hot 100 List in 2002) would turn out in droves to see her strutting her stuff. No wonder, then, that acclaimed indie director Robert Rodriguez tapped her to play lasso-twirling exotic dancer Nancy Callahan in his 2005 smash, Sin City.

“I wanted to do that movie because Robert was directing it, first and foremost,” she says. “I didn’t really know it was a comic book before I read the script. I would ask my agent, ‘What’s Robert doing? I want to do something with him!’ I auditioned the oldfashioned way: I met with a casting director and put myself on tape. It was a week of, ‘Does he think I suck? I don’t even care if I get the role, I just don’t want Robert to think I suck.’ He didn’t think I sucked.”

Neither did audiences, who made the inventive adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel a box office hit—to the tune of $80 million—as well as the biggest hit of Alba’s career. (A sequel is in production, for a planned 2008 release.) Interestingly, Alba shunned the nudity of the original comic book character, insisting that dancing around in a lasso and chaps would be sexy enough—not to mention her father would “probably disown [her]” if she had gone any further. The result was a potent performance that carefully treaded the thin line, much like one of Alba’s role models in a previous Rodriguez film.

“I wanted a choreographer, but Robert said no. He said, ‘We’re going to play the music and I want you to just feel it, like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn.’ Mind you, he’s [talking about] the sexiest dance I’ve ever seen on camera! I’m like, ‘Are you serious? I have to live up to that?!’ It’s iconic. She wasn’t naked, and she was gorgeous. My heart was beating so fast, I was so nervous. I went to strip clubs to see how strippers do it, and I had some Texans teach me how to rope and lasso.”

Alba immediately followed with another major film franchise, Fantastic Four, which she insists couldn’t be more different from Rodriguez’s gritty epic. She played Sue Storm, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed scientist whose DNA was altered so that when she expresses emotion, she becomes invisible. Though not quite the Spider-Man hit 20th Century Fox had hoped for, the family-friendly film performed well enough to merit a sequel—this month’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer—and Alba seemed to enjoy her Invisible Girl role.

“I think she’s a wonderful role model for women,” Alba insists. “She’s intelligent, she’s maternal and she keeps these boys in line. She has an amazing power—a force field that basically protects people—that, as a maternal person who wants to have kids and who has dogs that like to go into the middle of the street, is something I’d like to have. But she’s still very much a woman. She’s not kicking people’s butts for no reason. She does it when she has to, and she does it like a lady”—much like Alba herself, who appears to be kicking major butt in the career department.

The Ten, an indie about the Ten Commandments that debuted at Sundance, is due for a gradual rollout in August. Good Luck Chuck, a romantic comedy in which she co-stars opposite Dane Cook, also hits theaters that month. Then she has Awake, a drama with Hayden Christensen and Terrence Howard, and The Eye, a remake of a supernatural thriller from Hong Kong, due out later in the year. That’s five movies in six months, suggesting Alba may be making her own bid for Hollywood superpower.

“I’ve been doing this for a lot of years, so it’s definitely not an overnight thing. These movies all just happen to come out this year. I don’t entertain and act for myself,” she confesses. “[If that were the case], I’d just act in the mirror. I actually like having an audience and seeing people affected by stuff that I’m in. I love entertaining!”