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"  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not a kissing whore!&amp;quot;  Jessica Alba giggles as she shouts this impromptu declaration, aimed in part at the cast and crew of Good Luck Chuck, a romantic comedy she spent the summer filming for likely release next year, and in particular at her costar Dane Cook, the wiry, hyperkinetic comedian with whom she&amp;#039;s been locking lips for the past dozen or so takes. On a soundstage in Hollywood North (aka Vancouver, British Columbia) built to look like the interior of an airplane, the on-screen paramours have been filmed from every possible angle while engaged in a passionate kiss. And Alba, the dusky temptress whose curvy frame and strategically bared midriff may have been single-handedly responsible for the cinematic successes of Sin City and Fantastic Four, is equally amused and appalled by Cook&amp;#039;s sarcastic suggestion that their embrace might look more convincing if she&amp;#039;d let him use a little tongue.   At the age of 25, the unflappable actress has heard every corny come-on imaginable, and she retaliates with some constructive criticism of her own. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re totally squashing my nose,&amp;quot; she tells Cook. &amp;quot;You have to work on that. And does your hand have to be up my shirt? &amp;#039;Cause that was weird.&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s only the first week of production on the first comedy that Alba has ever starred in, but she&amp;#039;s prepared to sass anyone who sasses her, whether it&amp;#039;s the movie&amp;#039;s director, Mark Helfrich, or its cinematographer, Tony Richmond, who got his start on David Lean&amp;#039;s epic romance Doctor Zhivago. (&amp;quot;Is that as good as Doctor Zhivago?&amp;quot; she asks Richmond after one torrid take. &amp;quot;A little Julie Christie-Omar Sharif action for you?&amp;quot;)  And when Helfrich asks his actors if they want more air- conditioning, and Cook jokingly replies that it&amp;#039;s already cold enough, Alba has a comeback for that, too: She playfully spits her gum at him. The veteran stand-up is impressed by the display. &amp;quot;Playtime is over,&amp;quot; he says.  A few hours later, as Alba unwinds in her trailer, dressed in a magenta top, a painted-on pair of jeans, and a sparkling set of pink Converse sneakers, with her recently rescued bulldog, Bowie, curled up at her feet, she has precious little time to goof off. Her schedule for the second half of the year is one of perpetual motion: After wrapping the independent movie Bill\u2014a project she accepted on a day&amp;#039;s notice, once Lindsay Lohan dropped out\u2014she came to Canada to spend six weeks on Good Luck Chuck, and another four months making the sequel to the blockbuster comic-book adventure Fantastic Four. In 2007, she&amp;#039;ll begin shooting the lead role in a remake of the hit Hong Kong horror film The Eye, produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner.  For an actress who has already starred in her own TV show (the action series Dark Angel) and whose movies in 2005 earned more than $200 million in the United States alone, you&amp;#039;d think Alba would have reached a point where she no longer needs to hustle for every part. But even in the case of Good Luck Chuck, a modestly budgeted farce that&amp;#039;s closer in spirit to There&amp;#039;s Something About Mary than to When Harry Met Sally, she knows she might have lost out on the film if her leading man hadn&amp;#039;t campaigned on her behalf. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never done comedy before,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;and of course no one thinks of you outside the box that you&amp;#039;re in. They just view you as whatever you did last.&amp;quot;  Cook admits that Alba was not his first choice to play his character&amp;#039;s love interest, a penguin-obsessed marine park employee with bad relationship karma. &amp;quot;I dug her,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;but I wasn&amp;#039;t sure. I was like, I just don&amp;#039;t know her. She seems cool, but is she go-for-it funny?&amp;quot; What changed Cook&amp;#039;s mind was her unexpectedly hilarious performance hosting this summer&amp;#039;s MTV Movie Awards, in which she satirized stars like Naomi Watts and her future boss, Tom Cruise, in skits that parodied King Kong and Mission: Impossible III. As he watched from the show&amp;#039;s third row, Cook says, &amp;quot;I texted my managers and I go, &amp;#039;Cancel anybody else. She&amp;#039;s amazing.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  But in an industry where Alba is still better known for her body than for her body of work, she&amp;#039;s rarely had the opportunity to show off her comedic skills. &amp;quot;With my friends, I&amp;#039;m a total fool, but only they see that,&amp;quot; she says, a hint of disappointment in her voice. &amp;quot;When I go on a set, no one wants me to look gawky or weird. They want me to look like this version of this girl. That&amp;#039;s boring to me.&amp;quot;  Indeed, the actors who have recently shared the screen with her confess that they underestimated Alba&amp;#039;s talents because of her striking good looks. But they&amp;#039;ve also learned that she&amp;#039;s not interested in coasting on her attractiveness. &amp;quot;Look, everybody&amp;#039;s tongues are falling out\u2014she&amp;#039;s a stunningly beautiful girl,&amp;quot; says Aaron Eckhart, who stars with her in Bill as a man who helps a teenage boy pursue his unattainable crush: a lingerie store employee played by Alba. &amp;quot;But she knows that no matter how beautiful you are, you still have to act, and you have to create a character. I think those two sides of her are very much in balance.&amp;quot;  Alba has spent her life struggling to defy people&amp;#039;s expectations of her. From early childhood, the physical attributes she inherited from her father (who is Mexican-American) and mother (who is of French and Danish descent) gave her a distinctly multiethnic look\u2014one that would keep her from being fully accepted in the Latin communities she grew up in as her father, who worked in the Air Force&amp;#039;s personnel department, moved the family from one military base to another. After settling in Southern California, she took up acting at age 12. But she was dismayed to learn that, in audition after audition, her unique appearance actually put her at a disadvantage. &amp;quot;Mostly people just didn&amp;#039;t know what I was,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They couldn&amp;#039;t really categorize me.&amp;quot; In the eyes of casting agents, she says, &amp;quot;Katie Holmes is, like, the most ethnic girl they&amp;#039;ve ever seen.&amp;quot;  Frustrated, Alba sought other outlets for her adolescent energies, and even became a born-again Christian for four years. But she backed away from religion, she says, &amp;quot;when older men would hit on me, and my youth pastor said it was because I was wearing provocative clothing, when I wasn&amp;#039;t. It just made me feel like if I was in any way desirable to the opposite sex that it was my fault, and it made me ashamed of my body and being a woman.&amp;quot; She also vehemently disagreed with the church&amp;#039;s condemnations of premarital sex and homosexuality, and was bothered by the lack of strong female role models in the Bible. &amp;quot;I thought it was a nice guide,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but it certainly wasn&amp;#039;t how I was going to live my life.&amp;quot;  At the same time, her acting career began to take off: At 14, she was cast in an updated version of the TV show Flipper, and at 16, she was accepted into a prestigious summer program offered by the Atlantic Theater Acting School, the studio founded by David Mamet and William H. Macy, where she was trained by future Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, Macy&amp;#039;s wife and a longtime member of the company. &amp;quot;That girl worked so hard that I was really taken aback,&amp;quot; Huffman says of her former pupil. &amp;quot;Instead of working an hour on a scene, she&amp;#039;d work six hours on a scene. Instead of putting up one scene a week, she&amp;#039;d put up three scenes a week.&amp;quot;  Not long after, Alba got the break of a lifetime when Titanic director James Cameron chose her from a pool of hundreds to star in the stunt-heavy Dark Angel, about a freedom fighter kicking butt in a futuristic America. Cameron says that Alba was not the candidate preferred by his casting director and fellow producers, but when he reviewed her audition tape, he recalls, &amp;quot;I saw the spark of something\u2014a strength and a healthy dose of &amp;#039;tude that I was looking for in the character. She came in to read for me, and I knew right away we had our girl.&amp;quot;  Dark Angel lasted only two seasons, but each episode was a showcase for Alba&amp;#039;s athletic prowess, as she sped through city streets on motorcycles and leapt from tall buildings. The part also led to her first starring movie role: In 2003, she landed the title character in Honey, playing a hip-hop dancer who aspires to become a music-video choreographer. But in a movie meant to appeal primarily to urban audiences, with a cast that included rap and R&amp;amp;amp;B stars Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, and Lil&amp;#039; Romeo, Alba once again had to prove she was the woman for the job. &amp;quot;There were some people who wanted me to cast actresses who were African-American,&amp;quot; says Honey&amp;#039;s director, Bille Woodruff, &amp;quot;and there was some resistance from some people to cast Jessica.&amp;quot; But Woodruff held his ground. &amp;quot;I think she&amp;#039;s what the future, and what the present, really is,&amp;quot; he says.  In the three years since Honey, Alba&amp;#039;s Hollywood trajectory has been the mirror image of the career path taken by most movie stars: Instead of using indie movies as stepping-stones to blockbusters, she&amp;#039;s taken the blockbusters hoping that they will lead to the indies. But even while starring in a worldwide hit like Fantastic Four, she was disheartened at how little acting she was able to do in the film. &amp;quot;The movie wasn&amp;#039;t tailored to my character at all,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;She was kind of the same from beginning to end.&amp;quot;  And one of her earliest advocates wonders when the potential he first identified in her will finally pay off. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s done some good work lately,&amp;quot; Cameron says, &amp;quot;but I haven&amp;#039;t seen her do the role I know she has in her, the role that will blow everybody away.&amp;quot;  Though some of Alba&amp;#039;s recent roles\u2014a bikini-clad shark wrangler in Into the Blue; a stripper in the gritty crime drama Sin City\u2014have exposed more than just her acting chops, she doesn&amp;#039;t think she landed them because of how well she filled out her costumes. As a comparison, she brings up Kate Bosworth&amp;#039;s breakout performance in Blue Crush, in which Bosworth donned a two-piece to play a surfer. &amp;quot;Did she only get cast because of her body?&amp;quot; Alba asks rhetorically. &amp;quot;Why do people assume that of me?&amp;quot; She also points out that the directors of Sin City gave her the option of appearing nude in the film, but she declined. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t do nudity,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t. Maybe that makes me a bad actress. Maybe I won&amp;#039;t get hired in some things. But I have too much anxiety.&amp;quot;  And she nearly had a heart attack this year when she discovered herself on the cover of Playboy, in a publicity photograph from Into the Blue that depicted her in a barely there swimsuit\u2014a picture that she says neither she nor her representatives gave the magazine permission to use. &amp;quot;It went against who I am and what I represent,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been working so hard to be somebody else, and it wasn&amp;#039;t cool.&amp;quot; (Hugh Hefner wrote an apology letter to Alba and made charitable donations on her behalf.) Though she&amp;#039;d previously appeared on the cover of GQ wearing nothing more than a pair of granny panties, Alba says there&amp;#039;s a difference between the two men&amp;#039;s magazines: &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t open GQ thinking you&amp;#039;re going to look at somebody&amp;#039;s vagina.&amp;quot;  The one-two punch of Sin City and Fantastic Four, however, has given her a clout she&amp;#039;s never wielded in Hollywood before, and it&amp;#039;s entirely in Alba&amp;#039;s hands to decide who she wants to be now. Ever since she filmed the independent thriller Awake with Hayden Christensen in New York last fall, the longtime Los Angeles resident has been fantasizing about moving to Manhattan and wants to make more indie films as soon as possible. She&amp;#039;d also like to find some more time to spend with her boyfriend, Cash Warren, a former production assistant on Fantastic Four who has since begun producing his own films. &amp;quot;Just being an actress, period, and being in a relationship\u2014I don&amp;#039;t recommend it,&amp;quot; Alba says.  She&amp;#039;s also adjusting to her newfound popularity in the fashion community, where designers now compete to dress her for major events. One of her most beloved outfits is the luminous black, V-neck Versace gown that she wore to the Golden Globes in January, a design inspired by classic Hollywood couture that she didn&amp;#039;t think she could pull off. &amp;quot;I always thought Versace was for women who were more slender,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think I have very nice legs, and I thought you had to have a perfect body to wear it, but somehow I kind of got away with it.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s been dressed again by Versace for the Oscars, and by Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa for the Metropolitan Museum of Art&amp;#039;s annual Costume Institute gala, but she also gives props to Dolce &amp;amp;amp; Gabbana and Viktor &amp;amp;amp; Rolf for creating more informal clothes that make her feel comfortable and powerful at the same time. &amp;quot;I never dress for men\u2014I dress more for women,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not the miniskirt-and-cleavage girl, ever.&amp;quot;  And she makes no apologies for moments when the paparazzi have caught her looking less than glamorous. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m guilty, in an L.A. way, of wearing too many sweatsuits, but it&amp;#039;s because of work,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I have such long hours that I want to be in my pajamas.&amp;quot;  Alba says she might become a producer someday, to create more acting, writing, and directing opportunities for women on Hollywood&amp;#039;s notoriously lopsided playing field. &amp;quot;How many women do you see on this set?&amp;quot; she asks. &amp;quot;Do you think it&amp;#039;s equal?&amp;quot;  There&amp;#039;s at least one moviemaking mogul who thinks Alba would be a welcome addition to the small but growing number of female producers in Hollywood. &amp;quot;She certainly is someone who could do it,&amp;quot; producer Paula Wagner says. &amp;quot;You get the sense that she&amp;#039;s someone who could do whatever she puts her mind to. I look forward to it.&amp;quot;  Until then, Alba says there are countless other actresses whose careers she can turn to for inspiration, from fellow up-and-comers like Jessica Biel and Rosario Dawson to undisputed cinematic treasures such as Meryl Streep and Lauren Bacall. But she hesitates to describe any of these women as role models. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t really worry about other people, because I&amp;#039;m so different,&amp;quot; Alba says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t look like anybody else, and I didn&amp;#039;t come from the same place as anybody else.&amp;quot; And why should she follow in anyone&amp;#039;s footsteps, when she&amp;#039;d much rather blaze her own trail? &amp;quot;I like paving the way, because then there are no expectations. There&amp;#039;s only what I create.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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