‘City’ Slicker
With revealing roles in three new movies, Jessica Alba is roping in fans
By Tom Russo
Jessica Alba isn't a bitch, but she played one on TV. As Max, the genetically engineered babe-with-an-edge on the sci-fi series Dark Angel, she made her name but risked typecasting because the character always seemed to have her claws out. Now, two comic-book–to–film projects—Sin City, in which she plays stripper Nancy Callahan (right), and Fantastic Four, which showcases her as Invisible Woman Sue Storm—cast Alba in a very different light. "People said, ‚Nancy is the only innocent in Sin City, this doe-eyed sweetheart, and you play kick-ass girls,‘ " she says. "I was like, ‚I can play anything. That‘s my job.' "
In July's Fantastic Four, Alba, 23, plays the lone female in a superhero family unit. „Women heroes in movies are so crass and masculine, and she's feminine, refined, and thoughtful,“ she says. „They usually only write women in their sixties that way.“ Fantastic Four producer and Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad was sold after catching Alba's turn in 2003's Honey, in which she played a Bronx dancer dedicated to her art and to kids (a role the actress says she could relate to after growing up as one of 14 cousins in southern California). „In our movie she has to be maternal and hot,“ says Arad. „Hot came easy, but so did the maternal side. Jessica really is about family.“
She's also about love of the water, a passion she got to indulge in the Bahamas while filming Into the Blue, a bikinis-and-booty adventure also due in July. „If I wasn't an actress, I'd be a marine biologist,“ says Alba, who worked on a Flipper revival as a teen. To those with a less, um, scientific interest in this project, she laughs and offers a word of caution: „Just try to look sexy in a diving mask. With the suction and my [full] lips, I look like a fucking parrot. My close-ups were not cute.“
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