Jessica Alba is trying to slow down, but it's difficult - for a lot of reasons.
"Since I've opened myself to certain things, all of these amazing opportunities have come my way," she says. "It's hard to turn them down because it's what I always wanted. So I kind of embrace it with open arms but, at the same time, try to hang on to some sanity."
Alba is referring to an unlikely sea change in her career. Now 26, she has been a cute teen ("The New Adventures of Flipper"), supporting-actress eye candy ("Sin City"), lead-actress eye candy ("Into the Blue"), vacuum-packed action figure (on James Cameron's TV sci-fi drama "Dark Angel," and in the "Fantastic Four" movies) and, of course, most beautiful woman on the planet.
She looks pretty good now, sitting in a Manhattan hotel lobby dressed casually in slacks, a modestly low-cut top and high heels. What all those lovely pictures on magazine covers and the Web don't convey is how fine-boned she is. She's less a bombshell than she is a firecracker.
But what she'd really like to be, at least for now, is ... Lucille Ball. "I've always loved 'I Love Lucy,'" she says. "That's my favorite show."
And in Alba's latest film, "Good Luck Chuck," opening Friday, she does get to do a little Lucy. Her character, Cam Wexler, works with penguins and is more than a bit of a klutz. Of course, Cam still looks like Jessica Alba, so she attracts the attention of a dentist (played by comedian Dane Cook) who is famous for hooking up with women, only to see them marry the next guy they meet. He hopes Cam will be the one to break his "curse." Amazingly, it's the first time Alba's done a lead role in such a carefree movie.
"I'd never done comedy before," Alba says. "People in the business weren't really that open to me doing comedy. And I didn't really know [I could do it] until I just went for it.
"Also, my idea of comedy is different. I'm not into a sitcom-style, setup-joke rhythm. I'm more like, 'Put me in a circumstance, and let me go.'"
What Alba means is, let me go run into walls, let me knock over a tray of drinks. It comes naturally to her because she's that way in real life. Clumsiness used to make her cry as a kid, but at the same time she used to behave like "a complete jackass" to make friends. As an adult, she says she falls on her face when she tries to be cute.
Why Alba tries to be cute is a mystery. Perhaps, like some beautiful women, she's not at all sure how cute she really is. She talks about a date she had recently in which - trying to be cute - she climbed a pile of rocks to a romantic spot and fell into a lagoon. She emerged bloody and completely soaked.
For the record, the guy asked her out again (who wouldn't?), but she won't say who he was. Alba is guarded about her private life, although it's hard to imagine that, as busy as she is, she has much of one. She does drop the cuteness and coyness when she talks about her career.
"At a very young age I was very determined and very strong-willed, and I was going to make it happen no matter what, and nobody was going to get in my way," she says.
No doubt a lot of Alba's drive comes from her upbringing. The daughter of Mark Alba, a Mexican-American, and Catherine Jensen, who has French and Danish ancestry, Jessica was an Army brat, moving around from Mississippi to Texas to California. She has said that she felt she didn't fit into either the Mexican or Anglo communities, and found that acting became an outlet for her - and an out.
Over the years, Alba has been willing to do what it takes to get out, up to a point: She draws the line at nudity. She refused to disrobe for "Good Luck Chuck," and in a bathtub scene, she's actually wearing a strapless wet suit beneath the bubbles. However, she's about the only actress in the film who does keep her clothes on, a fact that makes Alba, clear-headed and serious about her career, just roll her eyes.
But Alba notes that she liked working on the film, in part because of Cook, in part because she got to play "a regular person." She's also excited about her next project, Mike Myers' "The Love Guru," though she's nervous too, maybe because she isn't sure of her comedy footing yet.
If Alba is nervous about the prospect of a Myers film, she may be secretly petrified about another project she's contemplating. Though far from being firm, there's a possibility that she could be on the New York stage next summer, especially if an impending writers strike shuts down Hollywood for a while. She might perform with the Atlantic Theater Company Off-Broadway, which makes sense since she took acting lessons from Atlantic co-founder William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, years ago. But there's another name associated with the company that she invokes - co-founder/playwright David Mamet, author of such scalding plays as "Glengarry Glen Ross."
"It might be a Mamet play," she says, being coy again.
Alba recognizes that the critical knives might be out if she tries the stage. But movie stardom has not only prepared her for that, it's also made it necessary.
"I don't really care [what people say], it's not about them, it's about me," she says. "If I don't have my performances as something just for me and start listening to jackasses that have a problem, then I have nothing at all. At least I have that."
Source: www.nydailynews.com
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