Thanks to chazman

From Teen Hollywood.com

The 'Angelic' Jessica Alba

It seems as if Jessica Alba, who stars in the new Fox series "Dark
Angel," can't escape her beauty.

When the 19-year-old actress walks down hallways, people stare
admiringly. Even during a recent interview, someone walked by and,
apropos of nothing, said, "See you, pretty woman." At the time,
Alba was busy talking about Malaysian princesses.

And Alba does have the fluid, flawless beauty and grace of a
storybook princess. That's probably part of the reason she was
chosen by director James Cameron ("Titanic") to star in "Dark
Angel," which Cameron created with Charles Eglee.

In the futuristic series, set in the year 2020 in the Pacific Northwest
after a nuclear-type catastrophe, Alba plays Max, a genetically
altered superwoman pursued by the military officers who made her
the way she is.

The show, which airs on Tuesday nights starting Oct. 3, also stars
John Savage ("Deer Hunter") as military leader Lydecker and Michael
Weatherly as Max's ally Logan.

Cameron says Alba got the part because of her strong audition.
"She didn't hold back in the auditions," he says. "You could see (the
other actors) sort of backing up and off balance."

Alba says Cameron got "straight to the point" during her audition for
the show. "Jim tells you where he wants you to go and gives you
the reason why you're going there."

She clearly enjoys playing Max, a character who uses her special
genetic powers to batter assorted bad guys. ax "can physically do
whatever she wants," Alba says. "She realizes, yeah, I can go kick
someone's butt . . . but she kind of has fun with it."

Alba comes to her role from a diverse background. She was born in
Pomona. The daughter of a U.S. Air Force officer, she grew up
mostly in Southern California, Mississippi and Del Rio, Texas.

"My father's family . . . two generations ago were all Mexicans and
came to California and settled," she says. "My mom's . . . dad is
from Denmark and her mother's from Montreal."

At age 15, she lived in Australia for about a year to be in the TV
series "Flipper." At age 16, she studied acting in New York under
playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy.

"My main acting teacher was Bill Macy," she says. "And he taught
me not to act." She says her influences include Susan Sarandon,
Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis and Jessica Lange.

She has also been influenced by Cameron, who says the show is
"about creating Max's world," a post-apocalyptic 2020 landscape in
which dark federal forces are hunting her down.

In a sense, this is Cameron's follow-up to "Titanic," since he has
released nothing as a producer or director on the big or small screen
since. (He is not directing "Dark Angel.")

"It really reminds me of my roots as a guerrilla filmmaker . . . doing
films in 21 days, really rapid fire," Cameron said at a news
conference.

"The whole first season we've already mapped out. For me, it's a
13-hour movie," he says of the first 13 episodes.

Some critics are already saying that Alba is better than "Dark Angel"
itself.

"I've never heard that before," she says. "I hope we can make the
show better and lighter. Some of the criticism I've found is that the
show is too dark or whatever, but you have to set the setting in
order for people to get wrapped up in the drama of it."

Alba's next project is the feature film "The Sleeping Dictionary,"
co-starring Bob Hoskins and Brenda Blethyn and directed by Guy
Jenkin.

"It's a love story between an English officer and a Malaysian
princess," she says.