Acting career

 

Jessica had expressed interest in becoming an actress since the age of five, took her first acting class at age twelve, and was signed by an agent nine months later.

Jessica'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 soon turned into a two month job when the actress in one of the more prominent roles in the film dropped out, and Jessica was picked to replace her because her hair matched that of the original actress.

Jessica appeared in two national TV commercials for Nintendo and J.C. Penney, and later was featured in several independent films. She branched out into TV in 1994 with a recurring role as insufferable young snob Jessica in three episodes of the popular Nickelodeon comedy series The Secret World of Alex Mack. She then won the role of Maya in the first two seasons of the TV series Flipper. Under the tutelage of her lifeguard mother, Jessica had learned to swim before she could walk, and was a PADI-certified scuba diver, skills which were put to good use on the show, which was filmed in Australia. In 1995 she appeared in the film Venus Rising as Young Eve.

After graduating from high school at age sixteen, Jessica studied acting with William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, at the Atlantic Theater Company, which was developed by Macy and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film director David Mamet.

In 1998 she appeared as Melissa Hauer in a first-season episode of the Steven Bochco crime-drama Brooklyn South, as Leanne in two episodes of Beverly Hills 90210, and as Layla in an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave. In 1999 she appeared in the Randy Quaid comedy feature P.U.N.K.S..

Jessica rose to geater prominence in Hollywood in 1999 after appearing as a member of a snobby high school clique in the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed, and as the female lead in the 1999 comedy-horror film Idle Hands, opposite Devon Sawa. Her big break may have been as the star of the popular Fox sci-fi TV series Dark Angel, which was co-created by writer/director James Cameron, who picked Jessica from a pool of 1,200 candidates for the role of genetically-engineered super soldier Max Guevera. The show ran for two seasons before being cancelled in 2002. Since then her most notable roles have been as an aspiring dancer/choreographer in Honey, the stripper Nancy Callahan in Sin City, and as the classic Marvel Comics character Invisible Woman in Fantastic Four.

Alba's most serious award nomination to date is that of a Golden Globe for "Lead Actress in a Drama Series" during the first season of Dark Angel. She did not win.

She has stated that despite being an extremely ambitious actress who desires the level of fame enjoyed by stars like Tom Cruise, she once told James Cameron during filming on Dark Angel that she did not want to direct because it appeared to be too difficult an undertaking, but that he responded with the prediction that she would end up directing sooner than she expected.