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Alba was born in Chino, California to Mark Alba and Cathy
Jensen. Her father is a Mexican American, while her maternal
grandfather was of Danish descent and her Canadian maternal
grandmother was of French, English and Italian descent. Alba was
raised in an Air Force family, living with her heavily Catholic
parents,[1] her brother Joshua, and her grandparents until she was
sixteen. She grew up a sports fanatic. Her father's Air Force career
took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before
they settled back in California when she was nine. Alba's early life
had been marked by a multitude of physical maladies, as she suffered
collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, a burst
appendix, a cyst on her tonsils, and asthma. 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. She also revealed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that she
suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child. Her health
improved, however, when her family moved to California.
Alba had
expressed interest in acting since the age of five. She took her
first acting class at age twelve, and she was signed by an acting
agent nine months later.
Alba'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 Alba was
picked to replace her because her hair matched that of the original
actress.
Young Alba appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo
and J.C. Penney, and later she was 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 had learned to swim
before she could walk, and she was a PADI-certified scuba diver,
skills which were put to good use on the show, which was filmed in
Australia. In 1995 she appeared in the film Venus Rising as Young
Eve.
After graduating from high school at the age of 16, 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.
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..
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. Her
big break may have been as the star of the Fox sci-fi TV series Dark
Angel, which was co-created by writer/director James Cameron, who
picked Alba from a pool of 1,200 candidates for the role of the
genetically-engineered super-soldier, Max Guevera. The show 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 as the Invisible Woman in the
Fantastic Four.
Alba's most prominent award nomination to date is that of a
Golden Globe for "Lead Actress in a Drama Series" (TV) during the
first season of Dark Angel.
She once told Dark Angel producer James Cameron that she did not
want to direct because it appeared to be too difficult an
undertaking, but he responded with the prediction that she would end
up directing sooner than she expected.
According to pagesix.com, she fears being typecast as a sex
kitten. But she said, "Somehow, I don't think this is happening to
Natalie Portman." 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. |
