Jessica Alba and her ambitious quest to be the next Tom Cruise
Actress Jessica Alba had a tough childhood, wearing hand-me-down clothes, living in a rough area of Los Angeles, and suffering serious health problems. Now she is an international film star, regularly topping those "sexiest woman in the world" polls. But this is just the beginning for a young woman who has her sights set on even greater things. Jessica Alba is only 26, but she has an air of self-possession and maturity that belies her age.
Unusually cool and composed, she sits on a sofa in her Beverly Hills hotel suite, sipping a latte. Slim, but not skinny, she has just eaten a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast and is clearly baffled by the size zero debate. "My happiness isn't dictated by what other people want or how they see me. I don’t feel I have to conform," she says. "I have always been a leader, not a follower. I don’t diet and I cook. I made chicken with basil, truffle oil and stewed tomatoes for dinner last night, and it was good," she smiles. "I love brownies and I probably drink too much coffee, but other than that I really don’t have any unhealthy attitudes towards food." Opinionated and articulate, you can see exactly why the actress has become a member of the elite group of young actresses (including Scarlett Johansson and Kirsten Dunst) who command $5m pay cheques.
Wearing a loose red dress over black leggings and high wedge sandals, she is exotic and captivating: Smooth caramel skin, brown eyes honey blonde hair. But what distinguishes her from many of her Hollywood contemporaries is a presence that can only be described as regal, which is fascinating, because the actress grew up in a rough Los Angeles suburb. Still happily married, her Mexican father Mark and Danish/French mother Cathy married while they were still in their teens and had two children in quick succession – Jessica has a younger brother Joshua. "My dad made $14,000 a year working in the air force; he now works as an estate agent. My mum worked at a youth centre, a clothing store and at McDonald's.
"For a long time we lived on air force bases in government housing, then when I was nine we moved to Los Angeles into my grandparents house. "Financially, we were poor, we wore thrift shop clothes and buying school clothes was the big expense for the year; we were always on a budget." Jessica says her parents made sure that the children knew that there were plenty of families worse off than they were. "My dad would drive us down to Mexico and say, 'I’ll show you what real poverty is,' and we would see that our life wasn’t that bad.
"I wasn’t a kid trying to sell gum on the side of the road. My parents did their best, but it was definitely tough. I'm really happy that I don’t live like that any more," she says quietly. It is unlikely that she will have to return to those stressful times. Her latest film is the summer blockbuster, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer. She plays Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman) in the sequel to the popular 2005 hit, based on the Marvel comic books. The first film turned Jessica into an international star. Jessica claims that from an early age, she had an uncanny feeling that she was destined for greater things. "I always felt like I was born into the wrong family – I didn’t feel I belonged and I felt that I should have been royal, and nobody knew that except me," smiles Jessica.
"I knew I would have to get out of that environment and make a lot of money, so I created that for myself at a young age as an actress. "I was performing for the family by the time I was three. I loved dancing, singing and acting, creating little plays. "I would use my cousins as supporting characters in my stories," she says, "or I’d get them to be my back-up dancers in my music videos." By the time she was 11, Jessica was pleading with her parents to pay for acting classes and finally persuaded them to let her enter a drama competition - the winner would get an agent and a series of auditions. "I won the grand prize, came to Beverly Hills, started getting work and never really stopped," she says with a shrug, making the whole thing sound completely effortless.
She attended auditions, despite the reservations of her father. "He’d say, 'This is a nice hobby but you’re going to have to go to college and get a real job,'" says Jessica. However, she was soon landing lucrative acting jobs, including a regular role on TV series Flipper, which entailed months living in Australia. Jessica had no qualms about leaving Los Angeles because she hated school. "I had nothing in common with the other girls, they were into being the cutest or the most popular and my idea of what I wanted out of life was very different. "I wasn’t into clothes or boys. I was worried about making money and getting the next job and being professional."
There was also an overriding feeling that she was an outsider, because of her mixed heritage. "Everything was very segregated," she says. "White girls hung out in a group, there was another group of Hispanic girls, black girls had their own group. I was shunned by the Latin community for not being Latin enough, which is why I liked acting so much and wanted to find my own path." Working solidly to achieve her goals meant formidable dedication. "I was on location working in lots of different countries. "It really taught me discipline. I was incredibly driven. And I don’t think you can be successful in the entertainment business without being driven - it’s so brutal." What makes Jessica’s early success extraordinary is that she suffered from serious health problems, related to childhood asthma, including collapsed lungs and repeated bouts of pneumonia, which meant she spent weeks at a time in hospital.
"I had a lot of time in bed to figure out what made me happy and I learned how to talk to adults and really communicate, which I didn’t mind because I didn’t have much in common with people my own age. "I grew out of the asthma, so I can’t complain. Everything is for a reason and I believe in fate," says Jessica who was raised Catholic and still considers herself to be a "spiritual" person. "Sometimes you have to learn lessons over and over again; karma’s a bitch. You’re meant to go through hard things in life to evolve." Jessica’s career reached a new level when she was just 17 and Titanic director James Cameron picked her out of thousands of beautiful young hopefuls, to star in his sci-fi TV series, Dark Angel. "My dad came on the set and I think he realised that acting could be a real career and he was proud of me." The show only survived two seasons, but Jessica had nothing to worry about. She made a seamless transition into films with a supporting role in Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore. She played a stripper in Sin City, starred in the underwater thriller Into The Blue and was cast as the sexy superhero in The Fantastic Four.
Because of the unexpected success of the first film, which grossed $330 million worldwide, along with Jessica’s elevated standing in the Hollywood power structure, her part is much more interesting this time. "In the last one I was just running in saying, 'Oh my God, something bad is happening let’s run.' In this film Sue is much softer with depth. It’s a richer role." Wearing a blonde wig and a costume with muscular padding to magnify the character’s prowess, Sue Storm is set to save the world from catastrophe, along with the other three members of the comic book team: Chris Evans as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch), Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm (The Thing) and the group’s leader, Ioan Gruffud as Reed Richards, (Mr. Fantastic). Was there special physical training for the role? "Not really because a lot of the action is computer generated," she says.
"But I had to look good and I hate exercise," she laughs. "I get so bored, so I just do anything that keeps me from wanting to kill myself when I am in the gym – like listening to my music on level 100, so that I feel that my hearing is gone when I have finished." Jessica is currently dating filmmaker Cash Warren, 28, whom she met on the set of the first Fantastic Four, where he was an assistant director. She refuses to discuss the relationship, or reports that they are about to get engaged, but does tell me that she loves "funny guys. I like the manly guy who can be romantic, but who’s in touch with his feelings and can also watch sport and hang out with my dad." What about settling down and starting a family? "No," she says firmly, "Maybe in a few years. "Right now, anyone in a relationship with me has to learn the hard way that I’m just not going to be around all the time." Apart from a busy film schedule, Jessica recently signed a $5m dollar modelling contract with Revlon.
"I still can’t believe it," she smiles. "It’s an iconic company. My mother is very girly and loves makeup, so she is thrilled and pretty proud." Meanwhile, Jessica constantly leads the polls in men’s magazines, as the world’s sexiest star. Isn’t it flattering? I ask. "Well it is all so bizarre to me because when I was young, no one ever asked me out on a date, I was nobody’s 'type' so this is very weird. But, yes, it is flattering." The quality of roles is definitely changing, though. She’s still offered the predictable male fantasy/stripper scripts, but also more substantial parts. She’s appearing in her first comedy, Good Luck Chuck. "I’m the one people make fun of, which is much more interesting." She has a new medical thriller out in a few months, Awake. "It’s great because I look normal," she smiles. "I’m not fighting anyone and I’m so happy that I don’t have to wear a bathing suit." She’s also starring in Sin City 2. What strikes me about the actress above all, is her single-minded determination – that never seems to waver.
She tells me she does take time off. An ideal day would involve a long hike with her bulldog Bowie and pug Sid Vicious, lunch with a girlfriend and a few hours curled up with a novel. "I like to get lost in someone else’s reality." But her own reality, which essentially boils down to her film career, appears to be the overriding concern. Jessica is also forging a path for women in another way – as a producer, an arena that has largely excluded women in the past. If you ask Jessica who her role models are, don’t expect the usual answer: Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. "Tom Cruise and Will Smith," comes the answer, without missing a beat, "because they really understand a brand and go for it.
"By 'brand' I mean the ability to open movies worldwide and dictate what you want out of that entire experience and that is yet to be done by women." If the actress’s story so far is anything to go by - that state of affairs is about to change. While she will inevitably continue to top those sexiest star polls, expect to see the name Jessica Alba turning up in business and financial magazines too - on the list of Hollywood’s wealthiest and most powerful players. Now that would really make her happy.
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www.dailymail.co.ukThe Visible Woman
LIKE all good superheroes, Jessica Alba leads a double life. There's Jessica Alba the actor: star of TV series Dark Angel and the smash-hit movies Sin City, Fantastic Four and its coming sequel in which she reprises her role as Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Woman.
Then there's Jessica Alba the sex goddess, who features prominently in magazine polls judging her among the sexiest women alive, put on the cover of Playboy magazine against her wishes and whose bikini-clad body was strategically enhanced on the posters for the dopey sunken treasure yarn Into the Blue.
The Jessica Alba sitting on a couch high up in the Crown Towers recently, in town to spruik the then-unfinished Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer says she recognises and is proud of the former, but accepts that the latter is part and parcel of the movie-making and media machine and treats her objectification and reluctant celebrity with a business-like resignation.
"I completely dissociate myself from that person," the stunning, but demurely dressed Alba says. "It's work. It's not me as a person. Nobody is buying into me as a person. A $100 million movie filled with special effects is a hell of a lot more interesting than me going grocery shopping. "I just know that I am a part of a bigger machine because it is nothing to do with me. I never wake up thinking I want to be on this list today. It kind of just happens. I am working in this business at a time where that is emphasised, so I am not really bucking it. It is what it is.
"I don't think I would do this for a living if I felt exploited by it. I would pursue theatre and wait tables and go do something completely different." Alba's way of dealing with the cult of celebrity is to try to switch it off and focus on her acting and she is dead serious about it even if she is unlikely to be troubling the Academy any time soon. She took her first acting class at the age of 12, but spent much of her early career moving from job to job -- including a cheesy update of Flipper filmed in Australia and a brief role on teen sitcom Beverly Hills 90210 -- with little understanding of what she was doing and no confidence in front of the camera. A harsh self-critic, she looks back on her early work and cringes. "I had no understanding of how to play a character or what that meant," she says candidly.
"I was just getting jobs and hoping to God I didn't suck that badly -- and frankly, most of it really sucked." A stint at the Atlantic Theatre Company, where her teachers included respected actors William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman helped teach her some technique, but it took the financial success of the first Fantastic Four movie (which, despite a critical hammering and a Razzie Award nomination for Alba made a respectable $391 million worldwide) to give the her confidence to apply it. "I was always trying to make the director happy and make the other actors and the producer happy," she says. "Acting wasn't a selfish thing and not until after the success of Fantastic Four did I think that I had been doing this for so long and it was time to do what made me happy. So I have learned to apply the method a little bit in different ways."
Alba's response to her newfound Hollywood clout is to throw herself into as many different products in as many different genres as she can. Apart from the Rise of the Silver Surfer, she has also completed a thriller with Hayden Christensen called Awake; her first romantic comedy, Good Luck Chuck; and a Hong Kong horror remake called The Eye. All of which is part of the grand plan. "It has definitely been a concerted effort to do as much variety as possible," she says. "I really enjoy what I do for a living and it's not about being a celebrity for me." With the Fantastic Four sequel still not finished and the finer details under wraps, Alba can only go on her gut feeling that it will match the surprise success of the original.
Alba gets a little tetchy at the observation that the first movie was dismissed as being lightweight and somewhat bland and a disappointment to fans of the comic. "The people who thought our movie should have been a bit darker or edgier were not Fantastic Four fans at all," she says. "They were critics who saw Batman Returns and thought that it should be like that. But if you read the comics from the Ultimate Series, the original to the Marvel Knights Series, which is the most edgy young and sexy version, its all very PG and cheeky. It's kind of what differentiates this comic book movie from the Ghost Rider and the X-Men and all of them really. "It's a family of superheroes -- it's more along the lines of the Incredibles or Shrek."
The new movie introduces one of the most loved characters in the Marvel Universe, the Silver Surfer, a noble and tormented alien who can absorb and manipulate the universe's cosmic energies and rides a funky, flying board. He also has a tendency to destroy planets while being held in the thrall of the god-like entity Galactus and it's up to the Invisible Woman, Mr Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), the Thing (Michael Chiklis) and the Human Torch (Chris Evans) to stop him. Aussie Julian McMahon also returns as their unsurprisingly not-dead nemesis Viktor Von Doom. "This time we didn't have to explain three times what we did for a living or what our powers were, so we could really hit the ground running," Alba says. "We are in the middle of a very chaotic time in their personal lives. Sue and Reed, two superheroes, are getting married, so it's the wedding of the century and it gets crashed by the biggest threat that our world has seen -- the presence of this alien who eats planets and sucks the energy out of them.
"So it was fun to go into the film knowing that that's where the stakes were. And on a personal level of the character -- she is dealing with wanting to be a wife and a mother and not necessarily work all the time. So she is struggling with being a superhero and having the weight of the world on her shoulders."
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www.news.com.au | Herald Sun