Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in Dark Angel, Sin City, Fantastic Four and Into the Blue.

Biography

Early life

Jessica Alba was born in Pomona, California to Mark Alba, who is of Mexican descent, and Cathy Jensen, who has Danish and French-Canadian ancestry. Her maternal grandfather was a 30-yr Marine noncom, serving in Pacific during WWII, and later as Asst. Drum Major, USMC Band. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, along with her brother, Joshua Alba, and her grandparents until she was 17. Her father's Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled back in California. Alba's early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, a burst appendix, a cyst on her tonsils and asthma.[citation needed] She has also acknowledged suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder during childhood [1] This served to isolate her from other children at school because, as she claims, she was in the hospital so often that no one knew her well enough to befriend her. Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California. Alba had expressed interest in acting since the age of five. She took her first acting class at age twelve, and an acting agent signed her nine months later.

Career

Alba's first appearance on film was a small role in the 1994 feature Camp Nowhere as Gail. She was originally hired for two weeks but her role turned into a two month job when the actress in one of the prominent roles dropped out.

Young Alba appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney; she was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as the insufferable young snob, Jessica, in three episodes of the Nickelodeon comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack. She then performed the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the TV series Flipper. Under the tutelage of her lifeguard mother, Alba learned to swim before she could walk, and she was a PADI-certified scuba diver, skills which were put to use on the show, which was filmed in Australia.

In 1998, she appeared as Melissa Hauer in a first-season episode of the Steven Bochco crime-drama Brooklyn South, as Leanne in two episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and as Layla in an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave. In 1999, she appeared in the Randy Quaid comedy feature P.U.N.K.S..

After graduating from high school, Alba studied acting with William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, at the Atlantic Theater Company, which was developed by Macy and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film director, David Mamet.