From a Never Been Kissed Honey to Dark Angel in Sin City, Jessica Alba has become one of the most watched actresses of this generation.

Jessica was born in California in April, 1981. Her family moved to Mississippi, returned to California, moved to Texas then made a final return to Southern California. All the shuffling was due to her father’s Air Force career. When the family did settle down in Southern California, Jessica was nine years old.

At various times during her childhood, Jessica wore braces and was pigeon-toed. She suffered from asthma and motion sickness, which she still has bouts of.

She fell in love with acting at the age of five though she didn’t start acting classes until her pre-teen age of 12. She starred in two commercials at a young age, one for Nintendo and another for JC Penny. By 16, she’d graduated high school and a Hollywood agent picked her up. She landed a role in The Secret World of Alex Mack in 1994 and her career took off.

In 1994, she appeared in her first full-length movie, Camp Nowhere. Since then, she’s starred in other movies, averaging about one per year. She appeared in Never Been Kissed, a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore in 1999; played and aspiring dancer in Honey and starred in Fantastic Four as Invisible Woman.

Jessica is also familiar with the small screen. As the star of Dark Angel for it’s two running seasons, Alba played a genetically-engineered soldier under the direction of James Cameron. She was nominated for a Golden Globe award for “Lead Actress in a Drama Series” for her role. She also hosted the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, including spoofs on King Kong, Mission Impossible 3, and The Da Vinci Code.

Always a jane of all trades, Alba has appeared over 100 times in magazines, including Allure, People, Rolling Stone, Maxim and her controversial appearance on Playboy. The fully-clothed photo in Playboy was used without her consent and she eventually brought a lawsuit against the publisher. The lawsuit was dropped, however, after Hugh Heffner, Playboy’s founder, issued an apology and donated money to two of Alba’s favorite charities.

In the midst of her success, Jessica admitted to being anorexic in 2001 and suffered a kidney infection the same year. Around the same time, she became engaged to Michael Weatherly, her Dark Angel co-star but it was called off. Then, in 2005, she began dating a director’s assistant on the set of Fantastic Four. Cash Warren has since proposed to the actress.

Jessica comes from a conservative family of mixed Mexican, French, and Danish descent. She has stated in a number of interviews that she still has a nudity clause in her contrast and to date has only appeared topless in a single movie, Sin City. She has only one sibling, though, a younger brother.

Though conservative herself, Alba admits to a a tattoo of a daisy with a ladybird on it on the back of her neck, a butterfly on her lower back, and a symbol for lotus flower on her wrist.

Besides her nomination for her part on Dark Angel, Miss Alba has been nominated for a not-so-flattering film award – twice. During the 26th annual Razzie Awards, she was nominated as “Worst Actress” for both Fantastic Four and Into the Blue.