Jessica Alba Biography: Age, Relationship, Height, Net Worth, Family, Career, Awards and Nomination 2024

Jessica Alba, born on April 28, 1981, is a renowned American actress. She embarked on her acting journey at the age of 13 with her role in Camp Nowhere (1994), subsequently appearing in The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba gained significant recognition at the age of 19 when she starred as the lead in the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), a performance that earned her a nomination for a Golden Globe.

Her breakthrough on the big screen occurred with the film Honey in 2003. She quickly solidified her status as a Hollywood actress and has appeared in a variety of successful films, such as Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Good Luck Chuck (2007), The Eye (2008), Valentine’s Day (2010), Little Fockers (2010), and Mechanic: Resurrection (2016). She has collaborated frequently with director Robert Rodriguez, featuring in movies like Sin City (2005), Machete (2010), Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011), Machete Kills (2013), and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). From 2019 to 2020, Alba was part of the Spectrum action crime series L.A.’s Finest.

In 2011, Alba co-founded The Honest Company, a business that specializes in selling baby, personal, and household products. Several magazines, including Men’s Health, Vanity Fair, and FHM, have recognized Alba as one of the world’s most beautiful women.

Early Life

Jessica Marie Alba was born in Pomona, California on April 28, 1981, to Catherine Louisa (née Jensen) and Mark David Alba. Her mother has Danish, Welsh, German, English and French ancestry, while her paternal grandparents, who were born in California, were children of Mexican immigrants.

She has a younger brother, Joshua. Her third cousin, once removed, is writer Gustavo Arellano. Her father’s Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled in Claremont, California when she was nine years old.

Alba has described her family as “very conservative… a traditional, Catholic, Latin American family”, and herself as very liberal; she says she identified as a “feminist” as early as age five.

Alba’s early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies. During childhood, she suffered from pneumonia four to five times a year and had partially collapsed lungs twice as well as a ruptured appendix and tonsillar cyst.

She has also had asthma since she was a child. She became isolated from other children at school because she was hospitalized so often, no one knew her well enough to befriend her.

She has said that her family’s frequent moving also contributed to her isolation from her peers. She graduated from Claremont High School at age 16 and subsequently attended the Atlantic Theater Company.

Acting Career

Alba’s interest in acting began at the age of five. In 1992, at the age of eleven, she convinced her mother to take her to an acting competition in Beverly Hills, where she won free acting classes as the grand prize.

Nine months later, she was signed by an agent. Her first film role was a small part in the 1994 movie Camp Nowhere, where she was originally hired for two weeks but ended up staying for two months.

Alba also appeared in national commercials for Nintendo and J. C. Penney as a child, and later starred in several independent films. She made her television debut in 1994 with a recurring role in the Nickelodeon series The Secret World of Alex Mack, and then played Maya in the first two seasons of the 1995 show Flipper.

Alba’s scuba diving skills, learned from her lifeguard mother, were put to use in the show, which was filmed in Australia. In 1998, she appeared in various television shows, and in 1999, she appeared in the comedy feature P.U.N.K.S.

After graduating from high school, Alba studied acting at the Atlantic Theater Company with William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman. She gained more recognition in Hollywood in 1999 after appearing in the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed and the comedy horror film Idle Hands.

In 2011, Alba worked for the third time with Robert Rodriguez in the film Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, portraying a retired spy who is called back into action. To bond with her new stepchildren, she invites them along. The film paled at the box office in comparison to the previous films in the franchise, but was still a moderate success, taking in US$85 million around the globe.

Alba next appeared with Adam Scott, Richard Jenkins, Jane Lynch, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Catherine O’Hara in the comedy A.C.O.D. (2013), portraying what the Washington Post described as a “fellow child of divorce”, with whom Scott’s character “almost cheats on” her girlfriend.

ScreenRant critic Ben Kendrick wrote: “[Winstead] and [Alba] also deliver in their contributions – though both of their characters are mainly designed to be mirrors for Carter to examine his own life and choices.” A.C.O.D. received a limited theatrical run in North America. In 2013, Alba also made her voice acting debut in the moderately successful animated film Escape from Planet Earth.

Alba worked once again with director Rodriguez for two film sequels. She reprised her role of an Immigration Officer, in an uncredited cameo appearance, in Machete Kills (2013), which flopped with critics and audiences, and her much larger role of stripper Nancy Callahan, seeking to avenge her late protector, in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which was released in August 2014, on 2D and 3D.

 Unlike the first film, A Dame to Kill For was a commercial failure, grossing US$39 million against its US$65 million production budget, and received mixed reviews from film critics. Variety felt it was a “late, limp attempt to turn Alba’s character from an exploited figure into an empowered one”.

She next took on the roles of a cabaret show performer in the dramedy Dear Eleanor (2014), the athletic girlfriend of a successful and well-respected English professor in the romantic comedy Some Kind of Beautiful (2014), a receptionist at a limo company in the thriller Stretch (also 2014), an emotionally vulnerable weapons trafficker in the crime comedy Barely Lethal (2015), and that of a documentary filmmaker in the horror film The Veil (2016); all films were released for limited theatrical runs and VOD.

In the action film Mechanic: Resurrection (2016), alongside Jason Statham, Alba played the girlfriend of a retired hitman. She did Krav Maga to get into shape for the film, and was drawn to the strength her character exhibited, remarking: “I think for these types of movies you don’t often get to see the female romantic lead kind of kick butt. I mean, it’s usually she’s being saved by the guy, and so it’s nice that I got to come to the table with a toughness, and a real heart”. The film made US$125.7 million worldwide.

She will star in and executive produce a new documentary series for Disney+ called Parenting Without Borders (working title) which will focus on families around the world and their beliefs and culture.

Public Image

Alba has received attention for her looks over the years and has been included in several publications’ lists of the most attractive celebrities of the time. She was included in Maxim Magazine’s Hot 100 list multiple times from 2001 to 2014. On this she has said, “I have to go to certain lengths to use sexuality to my advantage, while guiding people to thinking the way I want them to.” In 2002, she was voted the fifth Sexiest Female Star in a Hollywood.com poll. In 2005, she was named one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People,^[112] and appeared in the magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful list in 2007. She has also been named on FHM’s Sexiest Women lists.

Alba was named among Playboy magazine’s “25 Sexiest Celebrities” in 2006, and appeared on its cover that year. She was involved in litigation against Playboy for its use of her image on this cover (from a promotional shot for Into the Blue) without her consent, which she contended gave the impression that she was featured in the issue in a “nude pictorial”. She later dropped the lawsuit after receiving a personal apology from Playboy owner Hugh Hefner, who agreed to make donations to two charities Alba had supported. Also in 2006, readers of AskMen.com voted Alba #1 on its “99 Most Desirable Women” list. In 2007, Alba was ranked No.4 on Empire Magazine’s “100 Sexiest Movie Stars”. Both GQ and In Style had Alba on their June 2008 covers. She appeared in the 2009 Campari calendar, which featured photos of her posing; Campari printed 9,999 copies of the calendar. In 2011, she was named one of the “100 Hottest Women of All-Time” by Men’s Health, and in 2012 People named her one of the year’s “Most Beautiful at Every Age”.

In 2010, reports surfaced that a 21-year-old Chinese girl was seeking plastic surgery to resemble Alba in order to win back an ex-boyfriend; the star spoke out against the perceived need to change one’s appearance for love.

Alba has commented on her fears of being typecast as a sex kitten based on the bulk of parts offered to her. In an interview, Alba said she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress but believed she needed to do movies that she would otherwise not be interested in to build her career, stating that eventually she hoped to be more selective in her film projects.

Alba has been quoted saying she will not do nudity for a role. She was given the option to appear nude in Sin City by the film’s directors, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, but declined the offer, saying, “I don’t do nudity. I just don’t. Maybe that makes me a bad actress. Maybe I won’t get hired in some things. But I have too much anxiety”. She remarked of a GQ shoot in which she was scantily clad, “They didn’t want me to wear the granny panties, but I said, ‘If I’m gonna be topless I need to wear granny panties.”