'''Jessica Marie Alba''' (born April 28, 1981, in Pomona, California) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in ''
Dark Angel'', ''
Honey'', ''
Sin City'', ''
Fantastic Four'' and ''
Into the Blue''.
Biography
Early life
Alba was born in Pomona, California to Mark Alba who is of Mexican-American descent and Cathy Jensen of Danish, French-Canadian, English and Italian descent. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, along with her brother, Joshua Alba, and her grandparents until she was sixteen. She grew up a sports fanatic. 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, a cyst on her tonsils and asthma. 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 also revealed on ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' that she suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child. 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.
Career
Alba's first appearance in 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 was picked to replace her because her hair matched that of the original actress .
Young Alba appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney; she was later featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as the insufferable young snob, 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 1996, she appeared in the film ''Venus Rising'' as Young Eve.
In 1998, she appeared as Melissa Hauer in a first-season episode
