Alba's more than able
JESSICA ALBA would like to set the record straight. As an indelible fixture in the higher reaches of every men's magazine's "Sexiest Women Alive" lists, Alba has become defined as much for her body as her personality or character. The feisty 26-year-old seems to have appeared in a string of movies where her midriff is on display as much as any other part of her. Although in some way she has cultivated this by doing her fair share of raunchy photo shoots, it's not an impression of herself that she's entirely comfortable with, nor does she feel she deserves it.
"It's funny when people think that all I've done are bikini movies," she says. "I did one movie where I was wearing a bathing suit the whole time [Into the Blue]. I was playing a shark wrangler, and the whole movie was scuba diving. That's what you wear when you're scuba diving. It's just a really basic, simple place for journalists to go and instead of diving deeper, they just go there. I guess it's what the readers want to read about and the editors give the readers what they want, but it's not that deep."
Whether or not she likes it, Alba's body is once again a talking point. Nowadays, however, it's because she's expecting her first child with her fiance, Cash Warren, a producer and financier. She's deliberately vague when asked when exactly the baby will be born. "Soon" is as committal as she's prepared to be in revealing the due date. The baby, I later find out, is due in late-spring/early summer.
She has good reason to want to keep the details under wraps. Her pregnancy has filled hundreds of thousands of column inches covering everything from the baby's sex (it's a girl) to its possible name (Honor is an early favourite) to Alba's baby shower (guests were given a leather bracelet to wear until the baby is born) and her maternity look (described as "wholesome").
The day before we meet, the newspapers claimed that Alba's latest obsessive craving is toasted cheese sandwiches. According to these reports she's eating anything from three to "dozens" of toasted cheese sandwiches every day. I feel compelled to ask her about it. She's aware of the reports -- as she seems to be of most of the speculation and opinion of her -- but says that they are "totally out of context". "I was in Paris, she explains. "If you don't want to sit down for a three-hour meal, then that's all there is to eat."
I arrive as she's finishing breakfast. She apologises for non-existent crumbs on her face as she finishes her toast. Although she remains seated she's slight in frame (she's 5ft 6in) but in perfect shape thanks to her rigorous exercise regime, which, although drastically reduced while pregnant, is still very much alive. Her relatively small bump is hidden under a white dress and she has a large woollen scarf around her neck. Perhaps the most striking thing about her appearance is her eyes. Large and brown, they are probably her single biggest form of expression. She rolls them as she explains about the toasted sandwich assumption by the media, and they tell more of a story than her words ever could.
It's rather appropriate that her eyes are such a compelling feature of her appearance as we're meeting to discuss her new film, a Sixth Sense-style thriller called The Eye, in which she plays a blind violinist who undergoes an eye transplant only to be haunted by the past of her donor.
It's unquestionably the role in her portfolio so far which requires the most acting. After films such as Sin City and the Fantastic Four, it's a departure in that there are no special effects to hide behind, nor is she simply standing around in a swimsuit. There is the obligatory "Alba emerging from the shower" scene, but even that was acted by a body double. The rest is a psychological journey for her character, one which Alba prepared for by spending time in blind orientation centres and with a blind musician. She learned basic braille as well as how to label her house and keep everything in the exact same place so that she would know what it was. She also spent six months learning the violin.
While Sydney, her character in The Eye, battles with whether or not the ghosts she sees are real, Alba needs no convincing that the supernatural world exists.
"My parents had a haunted house," she explains. "I didn't see a ghost or anything but things happened in their house. Several times in the middle of the night the television would turn on and go to maximum volume. The front door and the back door would open, which are big heavy doors. All the faucets in the sinks would turn on. I couldn't sleep in that house. I hated it."
While her belief in the paranormal may raise a few eyebrows, Alba seems to be thick-skinned enough not to care what anyone has to say about her while at the same time remaining fully aware of what is being said. It's easy to tell that she enjoyed sinking her teeth into a more challenging role. She gives the impression of someone who'll be glad when the days of her being simply regarded as a pin-up, designed to draw in a teenage crowd are over. Motherhood may well change the public perception of her.
"I think just being older I'll be able to play more mature roles," she explains. "And being a mother definitely helps but yeah, I'm looking forward to my 30s."
Born in Los Angeles to Mark and Cathy Alba. Mark is of Mexican descent and Cathy French/Danish -- hence the kind genetic mix). Her parents married young and, as they were hard-up for cash, Alba spent her early years living with her paternal grandparents. She's often lazily referred to as a "Latino actress", something which irks her as she never learned to speak Spanish.
From the age of 12 she channelled her energies into acting, and got a role in the New Adventures of Flipper just two years later. While still a teenager, Alba became a born-again Christian for four years. She later moved away from it, saying "older men would hit on me, and my youth pastor said it was because I was wearing provocative clothing, when I wasn't. It just made me feel like if I was in any way desirable to the opposite sex that it was my fault, and it made me ashamed of my body and being a woman."
When she was 19 she beat thousands of others to get the part of Max Guevera in the James Cameron TV series Dark Angel. That series paved the way for movie leads in hugely successful teen movies such as Honey which in turn led to Sin City, the Fantastic Four and Into the Blue.
After Into the Blue, Playboy magazine used a publicity shot from the movie on their cover, implying that Alba had done a shoot with them when all they had inside was a paparazzi shot of her in a bikini sunbathing on the beach. Alba was outraged and Hugh Hefner made a written apology. The incident is an example not only of her cache in forcing the apology, but also an acknowledgement of the ability of Alba's body to shift sell.
While she rightly believes she has more to offer, for the time being at least Alba is happy to go along with it.
"It's not a big deal," she says. "I'm choosing to do those movies. I could do Broadway or off-Broadway, or I could do independent movies that nobody ever sees, but I choose to do movies that have to make money at the box office, so naturally you're going to be more scrutinised. I put myself in that situation."
Next on the agenda is motherhood. She began dating Warren -- who was an assistant to the producer -- while on the set of Fantastic Four. She found she was pregnant last September, and they got engaged at Christmas. The key to a successful relationship, she says, is"picking someone you're compatible with, and communicating".
Her child is going to have a markedly different upbringing to hers, where her parents at times struggled to put food on the table and clothes on her back. Alba hopes to infuse her child with the best of her upbringing, but admits that it will be "very, very different to the way I grew up".
There are some parts of her childhood that she's not so keen to repeat, however. "All my family cared about was sports," she says.
"That was the big thing. Personally, I would have liked it better if I was in a more stimulating environment. I'd prefer to put my child in as creative a situation as possible, with emphasis on art and music and literature."
Whether it's raising her child, or shedding her stereotype Jessica Alba, it seems, is always planning for the future.
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