Another new JA interview.
www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=49566 Alba plays publicity game to promote films
By Barry Koltnow, Tribune
October 2, 2005
Jessica Alba in a bikini!
Jessica Alba in a wet suit!
Jessica Alba in (gulp) her underwear!
There may be other equally important elements to the underwater thriller ‘‘Into the Blue,’’ but who really cares? It’s Jessica Alba’s world, and we’re all just voyeurs in it.
The actress, whose exotic beauty and curvy body graced the covers of seven — count ’em, seven — national magazines last month, is one hot Hollywood actress. This is her third movie this year, after ‘‘Sin City’’ and ‘‘Fantastic Four,’’ and she is about to launch her own clothing line and video game.
Did we mention that her new movie opened this weekend with a Jessica-inspired promotional push worthy of a summer blockbuster?
It would seem an easy task to dismiss Alba as Hollywood’s latest flavor of the month, but not to her face. Any attempt to bait her with such comments is met with a stony look and a thoughtful explanation.
‘‘This isn’t ‘The Deep,’ and I’m not coming out of the water in a wet T-shirt with nothing on underneath,’’ the actress explains between photo shoots in a luxury beachfront hotel in Santa Monica, Calif.
‘‘The movie takes place in the Bahamas, and this is what the locals in the islands wear in the summer. Girls in their 20s wear bikinis. It’s not that crazy or weird. It’s reality. It’s not exploitative. I’m not here to be the next big sex symbol. That’s not who I am. To call me that demeans all the hard work I’ve done to get here.’’
‘WE’RE NOT MUPPETS’
At the same time, the 24-year-old Alba acknowledges that studios use her looks to promote their films.
‘‘They sell movies the way they want to sell movies. It has nothing to do with me. It’s all of us, whether it’s me or Jessica Biel or Katie Holmes.
‘‘But I don’t object to it. I want to help sell my movies because the better my movies do at the box office, the more opportunities I’ll have in the future. Listen, I understand that actors are full-blown products, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re not Muppets anymore, like actors were in the old studio system. We have more power now, and we can do whatever we want with our careers.
‘‘But first, you have to sell your movies.’’
No sooner do the words passed her lips than Alba cringes.
‘‘When I answer honestly like that, it makes me sound crass,’’ she says in an apologetic tone. ‘‘It makes me come across too hard. But I can’t help it. That’s the way I am.’’
ROUTINE RESEARCH
In the movie, Alba and Walker play a carefree, attractive couple living the island dream on a tight budget. She works in a resort with sharks, and he is an aspiring treasure hunter with a boat that leaks. While diving with friends one day, they discover an ancient wreck that could make them all rich, but they also find a different kind of buried treasure that incurs the wrath of some nasty people who want to kill them.
Directed by John Stockwell ("Blue Crush"), the movie was shot over four months in the Bahamas. Alba says she spent 21 days ‘‘researching’’ the role.
‘‘I wanted to get as comfortable in the water as possible, so my two friends and I stayed in a condo and dove all day and hung out at night,’’ she says, barely able to maintain a straight face.
‘‘No, seriously, it was research.’’
NO LATINA
Alba was born in Pomona, Calif., and her family moved around the country because of her father’s stint in the Air Force. They settled in San Dimas, Calif., when she was 9. Her father had left the military by then and had started a real estate business. Her mother stayed home to raise Jessica and her younger brother.
Alba’s dark, exotic looks can be explained. Her father is Mexican-American; her mother has a French and Danish background.
‘‘People love to put that ‘Latina’ label over me because I guess it’s hot and trendy to be Latin these days,’’ she says when asked about her heritage.
‘‘But the truth is that it would be insincere for me to play up that angle. I don’t even speak Spanish. If you are going to represent a culture, you should at least be able to speak the language. Cameron Diaz is more Latin than I am. Her father was born in Cuba. My parents and grandparents were born in California. My great-grandparents were born in Mexico.
‘‘My father never spoke Spanish in the house,’’ she adds, ‘‘because he believed that it would be hard enough for my brother and me being dark-skinned without being able to speak English. He wanted us to blend in.’’
SWIMMING LESSONS
Jessica blended in, to a point. Until she was 12, she had severe asthma, and she spent a lot of time inside while other kids were outside playing.
‘‘I spent a lot of time alone,’’ she says. ‘‘I was isolated as a kid. It’s hard to make friends when you’re on a breathing machine with oxygen.’’
Acting was an escape from that life, she says, and she began taking acting classes at 12. Her mother drove her to auditions, and she appeared in the 1994 film ‘‘Camp Nowhere’’ and got a role in the TV series ‘‘The New Adventures of Flipper.’’ It was on that series that young Jessica learned how to scuba dive, a skill she used in ‘‘Into the Blue.’’
In 1998, the then-17-year-old actress was signed by James Cameron to star in his TV series ‘‘Dark Angel,’’ which debuted two years later on Fox. Once she made the commitment to a full-time film career, she has been working without a break.
‘‘I acted all last year, and this year I’ve done nothing but promote my three movies,’’ she says with a laugh. ‘‘I’m tired, but it’s better than being unemployed.’’
MEDIA ATTENTION
Alba, whose next acting assignment is in a characterdriven independent film called ‘‘Awake,’’ says she doesn’t really mind the endless promotional tour she’s been on, but she’s just starting to get used to the media attention.
‘‘When the tour started, a lot of interviewers didn’t know who I was. By the second round of interviews, they knew who I was, but I got a lot of the same questions. By the third movie, they actually cared what I had to say, so that’s been nice.
‘‘But the media attention is not something I think about too much. As I said, I understand that it’s part of selling movies. What gets me are the people in my business who complain about the media attention they’re getting. I tell them that they should try theater.
‘‘I’m OK with the attention because I don’t take it seriously. How can you take a magazine cover seriously when you know that they’re going to find someone else for next month’s cover? How great are you if you can be replaced in the very next issue?’’