Post by ML Fan on Aug 18, 2006 8:07:00 GMT -5
Fri, August 18, 2006
Jessica Alba: Funny girl. She might be drop-dead gorgeous but the amusing thing is the actress has a killer sense of humour - Sun Media's Kevin Williamson can testify to this from her Vancouver movie set.
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON, SUN MEDIA
VANCOUVER -- There's nothing sexier than a sense of humour. Or so the ugly people will tell you.
Which makes you wonder how disheartened they'll be to learn that Jessica Alba, hardly one of the beauty-deficient, has humour too.
Or that, despite a resume heavy on superheroes and strippers, she considers herself a klutz. Listen carefully and you can almost hear the ugly people hurling themselves to their deaths.
"It's the real me," Alba insists on the set of the raunchy romantic comedy Good Luck, Chuck, in which she plays an accident-prone penguin specialist. "I run into a tray and smash wine glasses. What else do I do? I pour hot wax on (her co-star Dane Cook's) lap. That's my introduction in the movie."
And not as much of a stretch as you may expect, considering that the 25-year-old actress shot to stardom as a futuristic fighter chick in James Cameron's science-fiction TV series Dark Angel.
"People don't see the outtakes. They don't see in Dark Angel when I sent five guys to the hospital because I knocked them in the head by accident. I'm very much a klutz and it's not something I really try to promote or talk about. It just is. It's embarrassing. Dane gets to see, like anyone who spends any time with me on set, that off-camera I'm quite clumsy."
Clumsy like a fox, maybe. After all, a little hair gel in There's Something About Mary helped Cameron Diaz morph from mouth-watering movie morsel into a superstar comedienne. The same transformation could be in store for Alba, if Good Luck, Chuck proves she's more than just a hottie.
"I've been waiting since I started acting to do something like this and people just never thought of me as a comedic actress."
That began to change this year when Alba hosted the MTV Movie Awards. Cook remembers being in the audience watching her perform in a spoof of King Kong. "The minute it ended, I called my agent and said I don't want to talk about anyone else -- she's wonderful," he says. "When we were looking for Cam Wexler (Alba's character), it was always difficult to find the key combination - someone who's beautiful and funny."
Alba admits she viewed the awards show as less a hosting gig than as an audition tape for potential directors.
"It was just to show people I'm capable of having fun and taking the piss out of myself, so they could see a lighter side of me. I didn't write the comic book movies. I didn't write Dark Angel or Sin City. All those characters were written by someone else. That's not who I really am. I've been very blessed, but it's nice to be able to try something other than a comic book character."
Not that she's exactly leaving those parts behind. The day after she wraps Chuck, she'll reprise her role as the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer. Like the original, the sequel is being shot in Vancouver.
"It feels like home," she says of the city where Dark Angel was shot.
Of that period in her life, she recalls, "When James Cameron picks you out of 1,200 people to star in the only thing he's done since Titanic, there's a lot of pressure. I trained for a year to get there physically to the point where I could do my own stunts and I worked 90 hours a week ... I overcame a lot of fears here. I think I've been on top of every building here and I'm afraid of heights -- and I'm clumsy. I'd have to try to be co-ordinated and go up on buildings and act cool and ride motorcycles with no helmets and all that fun stuff."
Less fun? Dealing with paparazzi and a loss of privacy. Still, Alba, who also spent a few days shooting Chuck in West Edmonton Mall (where they have penguins) says, "Canadians are very respectful. From Toronto to Vancouver, when they recognize you they'll say, 'Hi' and keep moving. They're not crazy and weird. But I'm also not Michael Jackson or Britney Spears -- these pop icons."
She equally plays down her status as a sex symbol. "That's stuff I never put any effort into it. It's just what it is."
Which isn't to say Good Luck, Chuck doesn't utilize her obvious charms. In the movie, Cook plays a guy who discovers every woman he sleeps with immediately dumps him and moves on to her soul mate. Things get complicated when he meets his dream girl, played by Alba.
"I think it's a guy's dream," Alba laughs, comparing the movie to such R-rated comedies as The 40-Year-Old Virgin. "Who wouldn't want that? I mean, come on. If you could hook up with any woman you wanted and women are throwing themselves at you and they don't want any commitment or attachment, who wouldn't want that? No guy would complain about that. What happens is the grass is always greener on the other side. Because he has the pick of the litter, he wants the one thing he can't have, which is love. And my character's not into hopping into bed. She believes in love. She's grounded and down to earth and traditional and the opposite of everyone else in the movie."
The same could presumably be said of Alba, who has been dating Cash Warren, a director's assistant she met on the set of the first Fantastic Four, for more than a year.
"Yeah, I've had a boyfriend for awhile. I'm not into dating as a sport, although I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I actually encourage it. It's just some people have time for that and other people don't. Personally, work is such a big deal for me, I don't have a lot of time for a lot of silliness."
Here´s the link, torontosun.com/Entertainment/Movies/2006/08/18/1763046-sun.html
Jessica Alba: Funny girl. She might be drop-dead gorgeous but the amusing thing is the actress has a killer sense of humour - Sun Media's Kevin Williamson can testify to this from her Vancouver movie set.
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON, SUN MEDIA
VANCOUVER -- There's nothing sexier than a sense of humour. Or so the ugly people will tell you.
Which makes you wonder how disheartened they'll be to learn that Jessica Alba, hardly one of the beauty-deficient, has humour too.
Or that, despite a resume heavy on superheroes and strippers, she considers herself a klutz. Listen carefully and you can almost hear the ugly people hurling themselves to their deaths.
"It's the real me," Alba insists on the set of the raunchy romantic comedy Good Luck, Chuck, in which she plays an accident-prone penguin specialist. "I run into a tray and smash wine glasses. What else do I do? I pour hot wax on (her co-star Dane Cook's) lap. That's my introduction in the movie."
And not as much of a stretch as you may expect, considering that the 25-year-old actress shot to stardom as a futuristic fighter chick in James Cameron's science-fiction TV series Dark Angel.
"People don't see the outtakes. They don't see in Dark Angel when I sent five guys to the hospital because I knocked them in the head by accident. I'm very much a klutz and it's not something I really try to promote or talk about. It just is. It's embarrassing. Dane gets to see, like anyone who spends any time with me on set, that off-camera I'm quite clumsy."
Clumsy like a fox, maybe. After all, a little hair gel in There's Something About Mary helped Cameron Diaz morph from mouth-watering movie morsel into a superstar comedienne. The same transformation could be in store for Alba, if Good Luck, Chuck proves she's more than just a hottie.
"I've been waiting since I started acting to do something like this and people just never thought of me as a comedic actress."
That began to change this year when Alba hosted the MTV Movie Awards. Cook remembers being in the audience watching her perform in a spoof of King Kong. "The minute it ended, I called my agent and said I don't want to talk about anyone else -- she's wonderful," he says. "When we were looking for Cam Wexler (Alba's character), it was always difficult to find the key combination - someone who's beautiful and funny."
Alba admits she viewed the awards show as less a hosting gig than as an audition tape for potential directors.
"It was just to show people I'm capable of having fun and taking the piss out of myself, so they could see a lighter side of me. I didn't write the comic book movies. I didn't write Dark Angel or Sin City. All those characters were written by someone else. That's not who I really am. I've been very blessed, but it's nice to be able to try something other than a comic book character."
Not that she's exactly leaving those parts behind. The day after she wraps Chuck, she'll reprise her role as the Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer. Like the original, the sequel is being shot in Vancouver.
"It feels like home," she says of the city where Dark Angel was shot.
Of that period in her life, she recalls, "When James Cameron picks you out of 1,200 people to star in the only thing he's done since Titanic, there's a lot of pressure. I trained for a year to get there physically to the point where I could do my own stunts and I worked 90 hours a week ... I overcame a lot of fears here. I think I've been on top of every building here and I'm afraid of heights -- and I'm clumsy. I'd have to try to be co-ordinated and go up on buildings and act cool and ride motorcycles with no helmets and all that fun stuff."
Less fun? Dealing with paparazzi and a loss of privacy. Still, Alba, who also spent a few days shooting Chuck in West Edmonton Mall (where they have penguins) says, "Canadians are very respectful. From Toronto to Vancouver, when they recognize you they'll say, 'Hi' and keep moving. They're not crazy and weird. But I'm also not Michael Jackson or Britney Spears -- these pop icons."
She equally plays down her status as a sex symbol. "That's stuff I never put any effort into it. It's just what it is."
Which isn't to say Good Luck, Chuck doesn't utilize her obvious charms. In the movie, Cook plays a guy who discovers every woman he sleeps with immediately dumps him and moves on to her soul mate. Things get complicated when he meets his dream girl, played by Alba.
"I think it's a guy's dream," Alba laughs, comparing the movie to such R-rated comedies as The 40-Year-Old Virgin. "Who wouldn't want that? I mean, come on. If you could hook up with any woman you wanted and women are throwing themselves at you and they don't want any commitment or attachment, who wouldn't want that? No guy would complain about that. What happens is the grass is always greener on the other side. Because he has the pick of the litter, he wants the one thing he can't have, which is love. And my character's not into hopping into bed. She believes in love. She's grounded and down to earth and traditional and the opposite of everyone else in the movie."
The same could presumably be said of Alba, who has been dating Cash Warren, a director's assistant she met on the set of the first Fantastic Four, for more than a year.
"Yeah, I've had a boyfriend for awhile. I'm not into dating as a sport, although I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I actually encourage it. It's just some people have time for that and other people don't. Personally, work is such a big deal for me, I don't have a lot of time for a lot of silliness."
Here´s the link, torontosun.com/Entertainment/Movies/2006/08/18/1763046-sun.html