Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba decided to become an actress when she was 12 years old. Warm, loving and decent people, her parents tried their best to talk her out of it. They didn`t want her budding ego crushed by repeated rejections, the staple fare of those seeking employment in show business. But Alba refused to budge.

"I knew it was my path - something I needed to do," she explains. "Acting gives me a feeling of freedom and vulnerability that I get high from. It`s an amazing, powerful thing to experiment with a character and coming up with something that will affect millions of people around the world - making them laugh or cry."

A steel-willed Air Force brat living in Southern California at the time, Alba bullied her worried parents into hauling her around for private acting lessons and occasional auditions in the bowels of Hollywood. A year later, as her mother asked, "Are you sure you want to do this?" for the 2,000th time, the lithe, dark-haired beauty made her professional debut as a featured extra in a motion picture called "Camp Nowhere" (1993). That`s when her mother quit her day job.

And today, the sultry, sexy 19-year-old actress is the star of her own major network series, "Dark Angel" (premieres Monday, Oct. 3, 9-11 p.m., Fox; regularly showing Mondays, 9-10 p.m., Fox), a futuristic action-drama created by Charles Eglee ("Murder One") and James Cameron ("Titanic") - who makes his television debut as a producer. Set in post-apocalyptic Seattle circa 2020, Alba portrays Max, a genetically engineered (by scientists of great taste) female prototype with a bar code emblazoned on the back of her neck now hunted like a wounded deer by Lydecker (John Savage), one of her former military handlers.

While trying to elude her murderous tormentors and hook up with a handful of fellow high-tech siblings who escaped the stark institution at the same time, Max stumbles over idealistic cyberjournalist Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a cool dude who enlists her aid in the fight against "the ruthless power brokers of the new millennium." To support her expensive hobby, Max tools around town on a souped-up Kawasaki Ninja as a bike messenger by day and a cat burglar by night.

"It`s a great part," says Alba, whose character also kicks men twice her size in the head, "because the character was practically tailored for me. I was cast even before they wrote the (pilot) script, so I had plenty of time to hang around with Charles (Eglee) and Jim (Cameron) to discuss the character. Ultimately, Max is hypersensitive because of the genetic engineering and has become street-smart. She`s also looking for her origins, though the answer might kill her."

Just before the sinewy, 5-foot-7 actress reported for work on her Ninja ("Sometimes I miss my mark and lay the bike on the ground, feeling like a dork, because I can`t hold 500 pounds between my legs.") in the damp streets of Vancouver, she wrapped a theatrical film featuring Bob Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn called "The Sleeping Dictionary" in the rain forests of Sarawak, Borneo.

Now old enough to legally live on her own, Alba didn`t need her mother or a guardian on the set while playing a girl of the Iban tribe falling in love with a British officer in "Dictionary" - a 1930s period piece - in Malaysia.

"Borneo is a fascinating place with the most spectacular sunsets on Earth, but the facilities were pretty crude at times," she says, laughing. "You have to get over being dirty, smelly and gross.

"You also have to get used to the fact that everybody else is dirty, smelly and gross," she continues. "And that their smallest fly is about the size of your thumb. We all popped malaria pills, going half insane with the side effects that include sleeplessness, heavy sweats and hot flashes. And there were snakes. Somebody almost stepped on a venomous snake outside their bedroom door and freaked out. A Malaysian guy just sauntered over, stomped on the snake`s head, wrung its neck and tossed it out the window. No big deal."

Born along with younger brother Josh in Pomona, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Alba spent most of her childhood divided between Air Force bases in California and Texas. Her father left the military to set up his own real-estate and mortgage company in Southern California, but her mother gave up all hopes of launching a career when her daughter started moving from job to job.

"My mom was there to protect me from the very beginning - she wasn`t about to drop me off at a set and leave me there alone to become a nightmare," says Alba. "But she and my dad sacrificed a lot for me. It was OK when I did a recurring character on the (cable) series `Secret World of Alex Mack` (1994) and a couple of `Beverly Hills, 90210` (1998) episodes as Leanne, but it got real tough on the family when I played Maya in the syndicated version of `Flipper` (1995-97) in Australia.

"I thank my parents every day for being so understanding and supportive of me," she continues with genuine appreciation. "My mother and brother came down to Surfer`s Paradise, Queensland, for the first year, leaving my dad behind for months at a time. But Josh hated going to private schools and wearing uniforms, so he left Australia before the second year. So it was just my mother and me cheering each other up in one of the most beautiful places in the world."

On locations from London to Fiji, Alba never had time to attend a formal high school. The bulk of her primary education came through a home-studies program supervised by her mother and various on-the-set tutors provided by the studios. In terms of practical training, she regards a 6 1/2-week intensive summer course four years ago at the Atlantic Theater Company in Vermont under the supervision of William H. Macy and David Mamet as her trade school.

With the cable movie "Paranoia" and the feature films "Never Been Kissed" and "Idle Hands" among her activities during the past year, there is no time for anything remotely resembling a personal life, according to Alba, whose exotic looks are the happy result of a Mexican-American father and a Danish and French-Canadian mother.

"My mom married at 19, but I want to live it up while I`m young," she says. "If I find someone, I`ll probably marry in my late 20s, then go off and have kids when people get sick of my face. I don`t even have a boyfriend right now because I`m working up to 18 hours a day."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Eirik Knutzen