Biography of Jessica AlbaJessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in Honey, Dark Angel, Sin City, Fantastic Four, Into the Blue and Idle Hands.
Alba was born in Pomona, California, to Mark Alba, who is Mexican American (though both of his parents were born in California), and Catherine (née Jensen), who has French and Danish ancestry; the two married while in their teenage years. Her maternal grandfather was a Marine NCO for 30 years, serving in the Pacific during WWII, and later as Asst. Drum Major for the United States Marine Band. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, along with her brother, Joshua (an actor who appeared with her in the season one finale of Dark Angel), and her grandparents, until she was seventeen years old. 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, and a cyst on her tonsils. 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.
She has also acknowledged suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder during childhood. 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.
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.
Alba has revealed that she envisions a much older man as her ideal partner, making references to Morgan Freeman, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, and Michael Caine. "I have this thing for older men. They've been around and know so much."
Regarding children, Alba said, "I'm really girly when it comes to kids. I've been surrounded by kids my whole life because I'm the oldest of 15 cousins — I've been changing diapers since I was six. I want to have a couple, for sure".
She has a tattoo of a daisy with a ladybug on the back of her neck, the Sanskrit symbol for the lotus flower, padma, on her wrist, and a lower back tattoo of a bow.
On her ethnicity
Of her mixed heritage, and perceptions of her ethnicity, Alba has said:
" I've got cousins galore. Mexicans just spread all their seeds. And the women just pop them out. My grandfather was the only Mexican at his college, the only Hispanic person at work and the only one at the all-white country club. He tried to forget his Mexican roots, because he never wanted his kids to be made to feel different in America. He and my grandmother didn't speak Spanish to their children. Now, as a third-generation American, I feel as if I have finally cut loose. My whole life, when I was growing up, not one race has ever accepted me, ... So I never felt connected or attached to any race specifically. I had a very American upbringing, I feel American, and I don't speak Spanish. So, to say that I'm a Latin actress, OK, but it's not fitting; it would be insincere. 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. [Before] I always felt like such an outcast and now I feel like people are more diverse ethnically. I was always [self-conscious] of my puffy lips and darker skin when I was a kid, because I felt like I didn't fit in. And now its mainstream, and color isn't as big of a deal and if anything its better.
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