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Fantasy figure
Jessica Alba is hiking in Hollywood’s Runyon Canyon. She is talking about her body. The body showcased to full, undulating perfection in films including Sin City and the Marvel comics adaptation Fantastic Four. “I hear people in this industry talking all the time about how Jennifer Lopez is fat,” she says tersely. “And I know if they’re calling her fat, they’re saying the same about me.” Rightly, Jessica Alba worries about this. At 24, she has so far been defined largely by her body. She is 5ft 6in, 34-25-34, and weighs around 120lb, depending upon her training schedule. But the numbers tell little of the story. Even beneath the baggy sweats she favours, Alba’s body is a marvel of feminine proportion. A siren song.
As a result, Alba has consistently ranked in the top 10 of men’s magazine polls. Websites devoted to her celebrity hammer on about her hotness with creepy persistence. US Weekly even reported the rumour that Alba was Tom Cruise’s first choice for a publicity girlfriend. She is good-humoured about the scrutiny, but confesses the one-note quality of it is starting to wear her out.
There are many reasons for this, and Alba, to her credit, has a firm grasp on most of them. Cast as she is, she hasn’t yet had much opportunity to act. The closest she comes to a scene-stealing turn is in the 1999 Drew Barrymore vehicle, Never Been Kissed, in which she is indisputably funny and natural. The rest of her CV — including schlocky thrillers, the short-lived James Cameron sci-fi TV series Dark Angel, and the ill-conceived hip-hop picture Honey — is less impressive. Her turn in Sin City, however, stands out, but largely because Alba plays a stripper with a heart of gold. And a lasso.
Alba grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs, one of two children of Mark and Cathy Alba. Mark is dark Mexican, Cathy is French and Danish. The genetic mix has been kind to Alba, leaving her with an intriguing ethnic palate that netted her roles as everything from a part-Malaysian in The Sleeping Dictionary to superhero Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman) in Fantastic Four.
Alba says that her ethnic melange, while photogenic, made for a challenging childhood. “I never really belonged anywhere,” she says. “I wasn’t white. I was shunned by the Latin community for not being Latin enough. My grandfather was the only one in our family to go to college. He made a choice not to speak Spanish in the house. He didn’t want his kids to be different.” Alba is taking Spanish lessons now.
Alba’s parents held several jobs apiece. At night, her father was a cook in a rib joint. “He was terrible,” she says, “but you could see them working, and he would ham it up for the customers, so they kept him.” Her mother logged days at McDonald’s and evenings tending bar. When money got especially tight, Mark would drive the kids to Mexico, and point out the shacks and the filthy water. “He wanted us to see that we had nothing to complain about,” she says. Still, she craved more.
“I was born with a wicked sense of entitlement,” she admits. “I always thought I was born into the wrong family, that I was royalty and nobody knew it but me.”
Alba was a clever, observant child. She noticed things. Like how much her parents enjoyed cutting loose. They needed to, to break out of the box of their lives. She remembers being unable to sleep most nights, and how she would wander into the kitchen and see her parents partying or arguing, drama they tried to protect their kids from in the daylight hours. Today Alba considers her parents her best friends.
“I want them to move here to Beverly Hills,” she explains. “I want them to expand their minds a little, get out of the suburbs.” She broke into movies and TV with relative ease; within a year of her first audition, she had a regular role on the TV series The New Adventures of Flipper.
If Alba mourns her lost childhood, it doesn’t show. “I don’t like to waste time,” she says. Alba is all about tomorrow — who she will become and what that will mean. She wants to have kids, some hers, some adopted, with a husband or without. She wants to start a business. She wants to run a production company — “and not just so I can put myself in movies. So many people do that. It’s pathetic.” Alba has no patience for weakness, especially weakness born of ego — “you know, like some woman in her forties who dates a 20-year-old so she can keep getting her picture in US Weekly.”
She prides herself on being professional, straightforward, level-headed. Among her friends, she is the advice-giver. She is older than her years, a girl who by circumstance and disposition grew up fast. Nothing grates on her nerves more than women who act like children because they can.
Jessica Alba drives her convertible BMW like a teenage boy. There are many, many close calls, which she barely registers, or does but blames the victim. As she drives, she talks animatedly about her man, who she is on her way to meet at a fancy clothing store. “If I found someone messing with him, I would cut them. That’s the ghetto side of me.”
We squeal into a Beverly Hills parking lot and a woman in head-to-toe studded denim teeters out on metallic heels. “That is my mom,” Alba says with a soft smile. “If she could dress that way every day, she would.” Alba parks and walks quickly towards Rodeo Drive. “I’m always a little late,” she says. “My parents were always so excited to be places that we would be early.” She finds the store and rushes inside, straight into the arms of her de-facto fiance, 26-year-old film assistant Cash Warren. Warren met Alba while working on Fantastic Four. (He is listed as assistant to director Tim Story, his second credit after working as an assistant last year on the god-awful Queen Latifah flick Taxi.) Warren has spent the past six months doing everything in his power to persuade her to marry him. Today he is trying on Dolce & Gabbana suits for industry appearances with Alba.
“Basically, I do whatever the girl wants,” he says, squeezing his swarthy frame into skinny pants. Later, as she shops for cheese, Alba explains what makes her relationship work. “We are the boy and girl version of each other,” she says. “We have the same ideas about the future. If I met Cash and I was married to somebody else, I would have to get a divorce. We make that much sense together.”
There is little evidence of Alba’s career anywhere in her home. No movie stills or glamour shots. Only family pictures in simple frames and modest furniture. “Why pay $10,000 for a couch?” she asks. “That’s so stupid.” The house is understated and clean, with a masculine edge. The only touches of girl are the photo collages stickered with the words ‘vacation’ and ‘birthday,’ and the underwear drawer in her closet.
Alba scouts the fridge — which appears to be arranged by food category — for a bottle of water. Braganza stops by, and suggests they go to Tae Bo, a trendy workout class. “I have a photo shoot soon,” says Alba. Braganza demurs. They decide to walk instead. The women keep walking, chatting about Hollywood, dogs and horrible kissers. The sun begins to set, turning LA a dusky blue. Alba pauses to admire the sky. She is thinking about the year ahead, wondering how things will evolve.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
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