JESSICA ALBA

FILM INTERVIEW Fantastic An g el Jessica Alba Heats Up the Summer Movie Season

HE ROCKY ROAD FROM PRECO CIOUS 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 burned out under the harsh glare of fame’s spotlight. So you’ve got to have some measure of respect for Jessica Alba, who began her career at the ripe old age of 12, carefully avoided becoming another tabloid-exploit ed cliché and emerged as one of Hollywood’s most popular sex symbols. Born in 1981 to a Mexican father and a mother ofFrench 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 this impermanent existence of her early childhood that initially prepared her for the nomadic life of a movie star. “ 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 says with an infectious laugh. “ 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 mov ies, including Flashdance, Fame, Dirty Dancing and Saturday Night Fever. It was during regular family trips to a Del Rio, Texas drive-in that the five-year-old Alba first decided she wanted to become an actress, but it would be seven more years before she would actually make her first move towards realizing that dream. “My family didn’t have the means [for me to take acting classes]. I wanted to, but my dad was making no money. It was hard because we only had one income and one car,” she recalls, “and my parents weren’t really in a position for me to do that. 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 prevent the determined young Alba from making her champagne wishes and caviar 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 an actress in a principal role dropped out, director Jonathan Prince chose Alba to take over the part. “It wasn’t like a big break,” Alba laughs when asked about her first film. “The girl they originally had for the part got sick or something, and they needed someone to play ‘Kissing Girl.’ They went into casting and matched our hair to hers, because we were replacing somebody who was already in the movie. 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, Alba’s appearance in Camp Nowhere ultimately led to national ad campaigns for Nintendo and J.C. Penney, a supporting role on Nickelodeon’s popular sitcom The Secret World of Alex Mack, and a lead role in the 1995 revival of the classic TV series Flipper (which lasted two seasons). From there it was on to small roles in teen-friendly films such as Never Been Kissed and Idle Hands, but it was her butt-kicking breakthrough role on James Cameron’s cult sci-fi series Dark Angel that made Alba the object of a million fanboy fantasies.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Seattle, Dark Angel cast Alba (who was barely 19 years old at the time) as Max Guevera, a genetically enhanced T BY ALEX LASSITER

superhuman prototype who escaped from a secret military lab. On the run from government agents who want to bring her back into the fold, the titular heroine took on ruthless power brokers while searching for others like her, desperately hoping to uncover the secrets of was altered so that when she expresses her emo tions, she turns invisible. Though not quite the Spider Man smash 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

I ACTUALLY LIKE HAVING AN AUDIENCE AND SEEING PEOPLE AFFECTED BY STUFF THAT I’M IN. I LOVE ENTERTAINING!

her past. The action-packed thriller achieved re spectable ratings and attracted a diehard cult fol lowing– especially among the Maxim and FHM crowd– but still the show was cancelled after just two seasons, reportedly due to gargantuan production costs.

According to Alba, the cast and crew were just as shocked as the show’s fans when they heard news of its unepected demise. “[James Cameron] had a really tough time with it,” she recalls. “ He was trying to explain, but he really couldn’t, because it was all weird and 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, Alba’s danceheavy teen flick seemed eminently disposable upon its 2003 release, coming off as a hip-hopinfluenced Flashdance update that had been watered down for mass consumption. But despite a paltry $17 million budget, the film brought in over $30 million at the U.S. box office, proving Alba’s fanbase (which had voted her #1 on Maxim’s Hot 100 Babe 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 Rodriguez was directing it, first and foremost,” she acknowledges. “I didn’t really know it was a comic book before I read the script. I would just ask my agent every month, ‘What’s Robert doing? I want to do something with him!’ I auditioned the old-fashioned way: I met with a casting director and put myself on tape. It was a week of, ‘ Does [Robert] 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 inven tive adaptation of FrankMiller’s classic graphic novel the biggest hit of Alba’s career, to the tune of nearly $80 million (a sequel is already in pro duction, for a planned 2008 release). Interestingly, the actress stuck to her guns and shunned the nudity of the original comic book character, insisting that dancing around in a lasso and chaps would be sexy enough and that her father would “probably disown me” if she went bot tomless. The result was a potent performance that carefully treaded the thin line dividing lust from lasciviousness, 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 SalmaHayek in From Dusk ‘til 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 soooo 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, The Fantastic Four, which she insists couldn’t be more different from Rodriguez’s gritty epic. Alba starred as Sue Storm, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed scientist whose DNA

to enjoy returning to the Invisible Girl role. “ I think she’s a wonderful role model for women,” Alba insists proudly. “I think she’s intelligent, she’s maternal and she keeps these boys in line. She has an amazing power– a force field which basically protects people– that, as a maternal person who wants to have kids and who does have dogs that are naughty and 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 walking in and kicking people’s butts for no reason. She does it when she has to, and she does it all like a lady.”

Much like Alba herself, who appears to be kicking major butt in the career department for the second half of 2007. The Ten, an indie about the Ten Commandments that made its debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is due to for a gradual rollout starting 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 HongKong, due out later in the year. For those keeping score, 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 af fected by stuff that I’m in. I love entertaining!”