Alba Walks On The Lighter Side
Jessica Alba is no "girly, prissy, whiny girl" and nor is her character.
Two years ago, Jessica Alba despaired of ever finding a role she could relate to. Soft teen stories were dominating, films like American Pie were being made, and she wondered if the era of the girly airhead would ever end.
Then she won the lead role in Dark Angel and began a happy two years playing the sassy, highly physical, futuristic Max Guevera, also known as X5 452.
Like Buffy Summers, Max is one of television's strong women, and a polar opposite to the likes of Joey from Dawson's Creek.
"It was teen mania and I wasn't attracted to the characters because as a young female I couldn't relate to them. I'm not a girly, prissy, teenage whiny girl. I make decisions and I'm strong and independent and there are lots of girls that are like me out there. I just wanted to play somebody that people could relate to and wasn't the stereotypical bubblehead or like the mean girl or whatever. She (Max) was really cool without being sexy," Alba, 21, says from her publicist's Los Angeles office.
But her character is sexy. Her strong physique is reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver in Alien, though more lithe. If you find an athletic body appealing, you would agree Max is one sexy chick.
Alba explains what she means: "A lot of time the cool girls are really working the sex and Max wasn't, she was almost butch and clueless about it, which is nice. She's sexy because she's not trying to be, her sex appeal comes from her confidence, not because she's bending over and smacking her arse."
"Dark Angel" was axed by its American host network, Fox, at the end of its second season, a decision Alba regrets, but she fiercely defends it against suggestions it was too bleak to sustain a television audience. The XFiles was just as dark, she says, claiming the parallel between the programs throws that argument out the window. "Obviously Fox and all those networks are scared of doing a dark show that people won't watch, but people watched our show because they loved it."
Alba says the axing was most disappointing for series creator James Cameron, as it represented the end of his first big television excursion. Cameron, who directed Titanic and both Terminator movies, was handson, she says, took a lot of interest in the story development and directed the final episode.
"He especially came into the last 13 episodes of the second season, so the audience will see a lot of Jim's (influence). He took it more into scifi and mythology. He loves stories and the depths and where things come from."
For herself, Alba is glad to be away from Vancouver, Canada, the wet city in which she worked for much of the past two years. Los Angeles is so much warmer, the native Californian says, more like Queensland. Queensland?
From the age of 14, Alba spent most of two years living in Surfers Paradise starring in the remake of the Flipper television series. Though her family relocated to be with her, she remembers the experience as lonely - although she loved working with the dolphins - and a time in which she learnt a lot about the discipline needed to succeed.
Most pressing is the memory of what happened to her younger brother. Alba starts to laugh as she recalls it.
"My poor little brother went to school there and he had to wear a coat and a tie and a hat and knee socks and he lost his mind. He was like a hiphop kid and he came to Australia and he had to wear tight shorts and socks to his knees and a goofy hat - he still hates me for that."
