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Name: Jessica Alba
Birth Name: Jessica Marie Alba
Height: 5' 6"
Date of Birth: April 28, 1981
One of the crop of bright-eyed, dewy-skinned young actors to attain
teen idoldom and a regular paycheck during the late 1990s, Jessica
Alba closed out the century as one of Hollywood's more promising new
talents. Born in Pomona, California, on April 28, 1981, Alba, whose
father was in the Air Force, moved with her family to Biloxi,
Mississippi, when she was an infant, but she eventually moved back
to California nine years later. It was back in California that she
embarked on an acting career; having been in love with the idea of
acting since she was five, Alba took her first acting class at the
age of 12, and nine months later, she landed her first agent. She
got her start on television, making appearances on shows like
Beverly Hills 90210, and she made her film debut in the 1994 kids
comedy Camp Nowhere.
Originally cast in a minor role in the film, she got her first big
break when the principal actress dropped out and she was asked to
take over. Following her debut, Alba did a great deal of work on
television. She got her first substantial film role as the object of
the protagonist's disastrous affection in the teen horror comedy
Idle Hands in 1999; that same year, she played one of the nasty
popular girls who terrorize Drew Barrymore in the romantic comedy
Never Been Kissed.
The following year Alba made waves on the small screen when she was
cast in the much hyped Fox series Dark Angel, executive produced by
James Cameron. She was cast as a genetically-engineered woman who
escapes from the lab and joins a cyberjournalist named Logan Cale
(Michael Weatherly) in his neverending fight against crime in a
post-apocalyptic future. Though the series was cancelled after two
seasons, Alba continued to appear in such indie features as Paranoid
(2000) and The Sleeping Dictionary (2002); the little-seen Glitter-esque
dancer drama Honey similarly did little to enhance her profile.
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All that would change,
however, when Alba became one of the core members of the quartet of
the Fantastic Four franchise. Mostly reviled by critics but a solid
success with audiences, her role as the spontaneously invisible
Susan Storm endeared her to 10-year-old sci-fi geeks everywhere. Now
a blockbuster actress, Alba attempted to balance this heightened
profile with roles in pedestrian thrillers (Into the Blue),
audacious pulp noirs (Sin City) and gross-out rom-coms (Good Luck
Chuck).
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