Here is a new JA interview from the daily news. I usually like her TV interviews more than the print ones
, but this is one of her best print interviews I've read in a long time
.
www2.dailynews.com/film/ci_3060377She's all about 'Blue'
Bob Strauss, Film Writer
Jessica Alba's hot streak continues with Friday's release of the bikini-centric thriller "Into the Blue."
It'll undoubtedly add to the sexy mystique that's been built around the 24-year-old actress this year from film roles as "Sin City's" cowgirl stripper and "Fantastic Four's" super-babe, not to mention some provocative magazine profiles.
She may not be the scorcher we've been led to believe, though. Serious and remarkably well-mannered in real life, the actress frets that this summer's publicity explosion may have left a skewed impression.
"I think people think I curse a lot more than I really do," she says, noting that some writers tend to quote her ... let's say, selectively. Meanwhile, "I didn't take any clothes off," is the default response when that "Sin City" job gets mentioned.
As for the unavoidable physical aspects of "Into the Blue," in which she's in a group of diving friends who discover sunken treasure and cocaine in the waters of the Bahamas, Alba emphasizes the health benefits of always looking swimsuit-ready.
"The movies that I do are usually physically demanding in one way or another," says the actress, who's worked with the same trainer since her breakthrough as the teenage heroine of TV's "Dark Angel." "It's a good way to keep your health on track. Especially when you've been on-set for 14 hours, it's nice to relieve that stress in another way than having to rely on a big meal and wine.
"Which is nice, and good for weekends," she emphatically adds. "But you can kind of put on the weight if you do that too much during the week. Especially if you're scantily clad, as people like to call me."
The regimen?
"I do tae bo. That's hard. I do weights and cardio. Sportwise, I really just play golf."
This has not only changed the asthmatic, introverted little girl Alba once was into a symbol of Hollywood glamour, it's made her a girl-power role model. And she knows it. "Into the Blue's" script had her unconscious and handcuffed to a sinking ship throughout the film's climax, awaiting rescue by her boyfriend, played by Paul Walker.
Alba proposed something a little more proactive.
"I just didn't like the damsel-in-distress thing. I could relate to young girls wanting to see her take care of herself. And because I'm so good at action, I talked the writer and producer and director into throwing together a little fight sequence. It ended up taking three more weeks to shoot it. But at least I'm not tied up and asleep until my knight in shining armor comes and saves me. So I thought it was cool."
Bold as she can be, though, Alba was not happy filming her many free-diving scenes in open water with live sharks.
"As much as they like to tell you it was a controlled and safe environment and they 'fed the sharks earlier today so they're full' - Ah, I don't think so," she says. "At the end of the day, you can't control what sharks are in the area and which ones are smelling blood in the water. Every day was nerve-racking. Even though, percentage wise, it's no different than it's always been, in that water it's another story. You're not thinking averages, you're thinking of your limbs."
So much for fun in the sun. When she's not afraid of getting eaten, however, Alba insists that she's a much more fun-loving person today than she was when she was younger.
Part of that had to do with her poor childhood health, of course. But there was also a gravity that set her apart from her peers.
"I didn't really have good friendships when I was a kid because I was just on a different level," recalls Alba, who graduated high school at 16 and studied with the Atlantic Theatre Company, playwright David Mamet's acting troupe. "I didn't think like a kid, I didn't have the carefree spirit of a child. I was really big about not wasting my life or wasting time at a very early age. I don't know where the hell it came from. But with success, I've sort of become a whole lot more carefree and open and smiling and laughing. I've become a lot more childlike as I've become older."
She also just said hell, we inform her.
"I did say hell," she acknowledges, smiling sweetly. "I'm sorry."
Anyway, acting just seemed like a natural path for the frivolity-impaired girl to follow. She began working at the age of 12.
"Probably an obvious reflection of that is that I chose a profession that I thought would treat me the most like an adult," she muses.
One thing Alba insisted on from the start was being thought of as an actress, as opposed to a Latino actress. That made eminent sense, of course. The daughter of a Mexican-American father and a mom of French and Danish heritage, Alba spent her early years on Air Force bases in Mississippi and Texas before the family joined her paternal grandparents in the L.A. suburb of La Verne.
Hollywood's traditional tendency to stereotype, however, has never made good sense.
"My whole life, when I was growing up, not one race has ever accepted me," Alba admits. "So I never felt connected or attached to any race specifically. I did grow up in a Mexican-American culture, but my mom was there the whole time. I mean, I had a very American upbringing, I feel American, and I don't speak Spanish. So, to say that I'm a Latin actress, OK, but it's not fitting; it would be insincere.
"If you're going to look genetically, I'm actually less Latin than Cameron Diaz, whose father is from Cuba. But she's not getting called a Latin actress because she's got blond hair and blue eyes."
Going blond for this year's movies has helped overcome ethnic assumptions professionally. As for which hair color she personally prefers, "I like both," Alba says. "They both make me feel different. I feel like I can be more natural, not have to wear as much makeup, when I have brown hair. With blond hair, you have to be a bit more dolled-up, but it's fun to play dress-up. I hate doing my roots, so blond hair's annoying for that, 'cause I'm not really a high-maintenance girl.
That extends to romance. Alba has been dating assistant producer Cash Warren since they met during the "Fantastic Four" shoot a year and a half ago. While she admits that they're "totally addicted to each other, " there's no rush to make anything formal.
"Not for a while," she says. "I need to do this, strike while the iron's hot. He's cool with that. He's a young man who's getting his career going."
Despite her claims that she's lightened up, it still sounds like Jessica Alba is almost all work and a little golf. She has friends now, she's happy to report, but cutting loose doesn't come easy. Many of her pals prefer the company of her parents, who run a real estate business but, apparently, get down in ways Jessica says she and her actor brother, Joshua, haven't quite mastered yet.
"My parents party, they're cool and can hang," she says proudly. "But they still have pretty conservative family values and views on sexuality. Mine have always been a little bit more open, more European. We've always sort of clashed in that way.
"Yet, I was very religious and straight when I was a kid, and they just thought I was crazy," she concludes.
We"ll take the sexy movie posters, thanks, but that's an image we're never getting out of our head.