Jessica Alba is an American actress whose TV and film credits include Dark Angel, Honey, Sin City, Fantastic Four, Into the Blue, Idle Hands and 2007's Good Luck Chuck. Alba rose to prominence following the television series Dark Angel, then expanding her résumé to film, predominantly within the confines of action and comedy. Alba appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim, and was voted AskMen.com's No. 1 on their list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" in FHM in 2007.

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.

Her 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.

Alba appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney as a child. She was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as the vain 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.

Alba rose to greater prominence in Hollywood in 1999 after appearing as a member of a snobby high school clique in the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed, and as the female lead in the 1999 comedy-horror film Idle Hands, opposite Devon Sawa.

Her big break came when writer/director James Cameron picked Alba from a pool of 1,200 candidates for the role of the genetically-engineered super-soldier, Max Guevara, on the FOX sci-fi TV series Dark Angel. Co-created by Cameron, the series starred Alba, and ran for two seasons until 2002, earning her critical acclaim as well as a Golden-Globe nomination.

During preparation for Dark Angel, in which Alba trained for three hours every day, the actress began to starve herself and became obsessed with exercise, going on to say, "A lot of girls have eating disorders and I did too. I got obsessed with it." Alba recalls coming to a realization that she had a problem when she dropped to just 100 lbs and cites her natural introduction to puberty and her development of womanly curves as two things that caused her "concern" regarding her aesthetics. Alba, who also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, says she has been cooking for herself since the age of twelve, in fear she will end up as fat as her family members.

Film career

Alba's most notable film roles have included an aspiring dancer-choreographer in Honey, exotic dancer Nancy Callahan in Sin City and as the classic Marvel Comics character Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four. Jessica went on to host the 2006 MTV Movie Awards and performed sketches spoofing the movies King Kong, Mission Impossible 3, and The Da Vinci Code. Alba's pending projects include The Eye (a remake of the Hong Kong original) and Sisters, alongside Eliska Amor and Paz Vega.

Birth name: Jessica Marie Alba
Birth date: April 28, 1981
Birth place: Pomona, California, United States
Years active: 1994 - present