Jessica Alba Biography

Name: Jessica Alba
Born: 28 April 1981 (Age: 30)
Where: Pomona, California USA
Height: 5' 6"
Awards: 1 Golden Globe Nomination

By her mid-twenties, Jessica Alba had already leapt more career hurdles than most actresses twice her age. In her early teens she starred in a kids' TV show - Flipper - usually enough to kill a fledgling film career stone dead. Yet she struggled on through bit parts in the likes of Beverly Hills 90120 and The Love Boat before being chosen by James Cameron to front his latest sci-fi project, Dark Angel. When that series was terminated before its time, it seemed Alba might forever be remembered merely as a second division Buffy. Yet again she bounced back, headlining a small hit in Honey, then stepping into the Silver Screen big-time with an eye-catching part in Robert Rodriguez' Sin City, then the successful Fantastic Four franchise. And all the while she was busy preparing herself for the tougher thespian challenges she knew would be ahead. Having come this far, Miss Alba was not to be denied.

She was born Jessica Marie Alba on Tuesday, the 28th of April, 1981, in Pomona, just a few miles east of Los Angeles down the San Bernadino Freeway. Her father, Mark, was a second generation Mexican-American, while her mother, Cathy Jensen, born in Montreal, was of French-Canadian and Danish descent. Mark and Cathy had met in a lift. He was a tennis trainer, she was a student at UCLA. Jessica arrived quickly, followed 15 months later by brother Josh.

Times were tough, both parents worked multiple jobs, and Mark had to follow the money. When Jessica was still an infant, he moved the family to Biloxi, on the Mississippi Sound between New Orleans and Mobile. Here he'd join the US Air Force at the Keesler Air Force Base, home of the 81st Training Wing, where airmen who'd just completed basic training would be further schooled, mostly in electronics - ground radio, cryptography etc. Cathy, meanwhile, would work as a lifeguard. They'd stay in Biloxi for three years, before briefly returning to southern California and then moving on to Del Rio, Texas, near Lake Amistead on the edge of the vast Edwards Plateau, Mark working at Laughlin Air Force Base, location of the 47th Flying Trianing Wing and the US Air Force's busiest pilot training base. Del Rio was a major crossing point for illegal Mexican immigrants, right on the border. In the past, many denizens of Laughlin had crossed the other way to visit the infamous brothel district of Cuidad Acuna, known as Boy's Town. Here had been the notorious Blowjob Alley, closed down in 1984 after a series of beatings and murders, most of them committed by soldiers enraged that their pleasurer was in fact a pre-op transsexual.

Jessica Alba